Derek Achong

A mid-morn­ing shoot­ing in Mar­aval yes­ter­day claimed the life of a 23-year-old ar­ti­san. The vic­tim was iden­ti­fied as Dwayne Pil­grim, of Faustin Trace, Morne Co­co Road, Mar­aval. Up to late yes­ter­day, the na­tion's mur­der toll stood at 38, as op­posed to 46 for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, the shoot­ing oc­curred around 9.15 am as Pil­grim was leav­ing a fab­ri­ca­tion shop at Up­per Morne Co­co Road, Mar­aval, where he was em­ployed.

Po­lice said a white ve­hi­cle pulled along­side him and a gun­man ex­it­ed the front pas­sen­ger seat and opened fire.

Pil­grim sus­tained mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds to the chest and up­per body as he was at­tempt­ing to flee. Po­lice said that the gun­man made his es­cape in the wait­ing ve­hi­cle. Pil­grim was rushed to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival. His body was re­moved to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, where a post-mortem would be per­formed to­day.

De­tec­tives of the West­ern Di­vi­sion said Pil­grim was well known to them. Up to late yes­ter­day in­ves­ti­ga­tors had not es­tab­lished a mo­tive for the killing. In­spec­tor Hen­ry Dann and Sgt Ul­ric Prescott vis­it­ed the scene and are as­sist­ing of­fi­cers of the Re­gion One Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions in prob­ing the shoot­ing.