Two friends were shot dead hours apart in separate incidents on Thursday night, pushing the murder toll to nine for the year.Shortly after 8 pm Wallace Guy and his friend Nicholas Kerr were at Boxhill Trace, Laventille, with other people when a white Nissan Tiida pulled up and someone inside opened fire on the group.Guy was shot repeatedly and died on the spot. Kerr escaped after the killer's gun jammed, but hours later, he was gunned down in Belmont.
Police believe the killer followed Kerr, who was shot dead while driving along St Francois Valley Road, Belmont, around 10 pm.Speaking with members of the media outside the Forensic Science Centre, St James, relatives of Guy said he was a PH driver and mechanic who was concerned with raising his two children, aged five and two, and was not involved in criminal activity.
The relatives said Guy who lived at Boxhill Trace, would have turned 24 on January 8 and was a very "jolly guy" who was always in high spirits and was willing to help anyone in need. They said Guy was not one to be outside his home after 10 pm.
Relatives of Kerr described him as a gentle, soft-spoken man. They said Kerr, 22, lived at Redhill, Laventille, and earned the nickname "Mentos" from selling pimento pepper with his mother as a child. Kerr, the father of a four-year-old boy, was both a plumber and mechanic who enjoyed installing audio systems in cars.
One relative said until something drastic was done about the crime nothing was going to change, and another lamented that crime was a large, moneymaking industry which could not be stopped.In two other unrelated shooting incidents, police said around 8 pm Denzil "Beast" Charles was shot in the right hand while standing near his home on Toco Main Road, Matura. Charles was approached by two men, one of whom was armed with a shotgun. He opened fire on Charles hitting him in the hand before running away, police said.
Then at 9.45 pm PH taxi driver Trevor Neverson, 56, was shot in the right leg by a passenger for refusing to go off route. Police reports are that two men asked to be taken to Church Street, Laventille, and when Neverson refused the men demanded to be let out at the corner. On getting out, one of men shot Neverson in the leg.Both men are warded at hospital in satisfactory condition.
Unidentified man
Police are yet to identify the body of the man found in a drain near the Caroni Bird Sanctuary, off the Uriah Butler Highway, on Thursday by a group of crab catchers. Police responded to a report of a body floating in a river around 3.45 pm. The body was pulled out on the north-bound lane of the highway. The man bore a gunshot wound to the head and the body was weighed down with two concrete bricks tied to the dead man's legs. The man, of East Indian descent, was wearing a blue three-quarter pants and a blue jersey.