Derek Achong

Three men were mur­dered in two sep­a­rate shoot­ings in Diego Mar­tin and Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day night, in­creas­ing the num­ber of peo­ple killed over the Eman­ci­pa­tion hol­i­day week­end to sev­en.In the first in­ci­dent, around 7.30 pm, 29-year-old Shan­dell Dook­ie, Reinzi Pierre, 25, Al­lan Paul, 27, and an uniden­ti­fied friend were re­pair­ing Pierre's black Hon­da Civic out­side Dook­ie's home on St Lu­cien Road, Diego Mar­tin.

Po­lice said a stranger who was walk­ing near­by drew a gun, ran to­wards the group of men and fired sev­er­al shots. The gun­man then ran away.Dook­ie, Pierre and Paul were shot sev­er­al times, while their friend, who ran away and hid be­hind an­oth­er car, es­caped,West­ern Di­vi­sion Po­lice led by Supt Bal­ram ar­rived on the scene and took Dook­ie and Paul to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Pierre, who was well known to po­lice and is be­lieved to be the gun­man's tar­get, was pro­nounced dead on the scene by a Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer (DMO).Dook­ie, the fa­ther of two girls and a boy, aged six, four and sev­en months, died while un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery for gun­shot wounds to his chest and head. Paul re­mained ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion up to late yes­ter­day.

In an in­ter­view near to the scene of the shoot­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing, Dook­ie's rel­a­tives de­nied that the young me­chan­ic was in­volved in crime and la­beled his death as a case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty."My cousin wasn't in any­thing il­le­gal or any­thing wrong. He was killed be­cause of the com­pa­ny he kept," a male rel­a­tive who asked for his name to be with­held said.

Dook­ie's rel­a­tive de­scribed Pierre as a trou­ble­mak­er as he claimed his rel­a­tive was prob­a­bly killed be­cause the gun­man thought he was one of Pierre's crim­i­nal as­so­ciates.He said al­though he and oth­er rel­a­tives warned Dook­ie about Pierre, he (Dook­ie) warned him of tak­ing the job from Pierre.

"You see Shan­dell was think­ing about he could make a quick hus­tle from Pierre, be­cause the man have three chil­dren to feed. He went to Bam­boo and pick up parts and thing with him. But like who­ev­er was look­ing for Pierre they must be think­ing that be­cause they rid­ing to­geth­er they were friends. So they come and kill both of them one time. But that wasn't the case at all. They just kill that boy for no rea­son. And now they leave three chil­dren fa­ther­less," the rel­a­tive said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Pierre's grand­fa­ther, Bertrand Ledger, who help raised him as a child, ac­knowl­edged that he had been im­pris­oned sev­er­al times in the past.

"His prob­lem was that he reached a cer­tain age and thought he knew bet­ter and wouldn't lis­ten and he fell in­to bad com­pa­ny. He took the wrong road in life and this was the vi­o­lent end to that road. Just the day be­fore (Fri­day) he was in my home and I told him stay away from the com­pa­ny he usu­al­ly keeps. I told him we liv­ing in a more se­ri­ous time and he needs to live a bet­ter life if he wants to reach my age (77). But he didn't lis­ten," Ledger lament­ed.

Mean­while, a 27-year-old man from Laven­tille died in hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day af­ter be­ing wound­ed in a shoot­ing in Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day night.Around 9.30 pm po­lice of the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion were on pa­trol along In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, when they spot­ted a man in a blood-stained T-shirt run­ning near to a make-shift shop­ping cen­tre at the now de­mol­ished Sal­va­to­ry build­ing.The man, who was lat­er iden­ti­fied as Ka­malah Ed­wards, of Pic­ton Road, Laven­tille, col­lapsed a short dis­tance away from po­lice.

He was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal but suc­cumbed around 8 am yes­ter­day.In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they were un­able to speak to Ed­wards be­fore he died and as such they had not de­ter­mined where he was shot or the iden­ti­ties of his at­tack­ers up to late yes­ter­day.The lat­est string of mur­ders raised the mur­der toll for the year to 261, com­pared to 227 for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od, last year–an al­most 15 per cent in­crease.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.