Jensen La Vende

An 18-year-old con­struc­tion work­er was shot in the head and killed yes­ter­day when a gun­man opened fire on the house where the teenag­er went to pur­chase mar­i­jua­na.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Sal­im Gon­za­les, was work­ing on his grand­moth­er's home and left to buy the il­le­gal drugs from a man at a near­by house when he was killed.

Po­lice be­lieve the in­tend­ed tar­get was the drug deal­er who was shot in the shoul­der. Po­lice said Gon­za­les was at Irv­ing Mc Williams Street, Phase Six, La Hor­quet­ta, around 10.20 am when he was killed.

The oth­er man, whose iden­ti­ty is with­held as he is yet to be charged with any crim­i­nal of­fence, was shot in the right shoul­der and is ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion at the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

Gon­za­les, orig­i­nal­ly from Ramkhelawan Trace, St Joseph, would have cel­e­brat­ed his 19th birth­day on De­cem­ber 26, his fa­ther, Gre­go­ry Gon­za­les, told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

He said his son, who was shot in the right tem­ple, fre­quent­ed the area as he vis­it­ed his grand­moth­er and be­came ac­quaint­ed with peo­ple from the area. He said his son was ar­rest­ed for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in the past but noth­ing that would war­rant him to be mur­dered.

In an un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dent homi­cide de­tec­tives are al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing death of a D'Abadie man on Sun­day. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 3 pm on Sun­day, po­lice were called af­ter re­ports of gun­shots were heard at Sun­beam Street, Red Hill, D'Abadie. Po­lice said two men am­bushed Mau­rice Clif­ford and an­oth­er man who were do­ing ren­o­va­tion work on a house near Clif­ford's home.

Po­lice said the 42-year-old was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Cen­tre. No mo­tive was giv­en for his killing

The two mur­ders as well as that of 64-year-old Jankey Per­sad who was shot dead at his home at En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, on Sun­day, three days af­ter Keron "Pan­ther" James was mur­dered in the said house, took the mur­der toll to 382 for the year.

For the same pe­ri­od last year, 362 peo­ple had been mur­dered.