Two men who were released from prison last October on charges of kidnapping and robbery, were gunned down on Thursday night after going to a meeting in Carapo, off Arima.
According to police, Damian Daniel, 38 and Clint Hernandez, 33 were found shot to death in Daniel's pick-up around 8 pm along Simon Road, Carapo. Relatives of Hernandez said someone telephoned him last week to attend a meeting but refused and had been ignoring numerous calls to attend the meeting.
It was only when his friend Daniel advised him to attend the meeting and agreed accompany him that the two men venture to Carapo where they met their deaths.
Speaking at the Forensic Science Centre, St James yesterday, Hernandez' brother Joel Davidson said his sibling was a criminal who met his death due to his criminal past.
Davidson said Daniel and his brother were like "ring on finger."
"My brother, he was no saint. He was involved in criminal activity. Anything you can think of he was there. He left home in Brazil to Carapo. He said he had a meeting to go to. The next thing I hear is he was dead. I do not know how many people he left crying. I was expecting this to happen," Davidson said.
He said his brother survived a gun attack last year where he was shot nine times. He said his friend Daniel was with him then but was not harmed.
Davidson said it was Hernandez who took him to church and who took him to play basketball and questioned how and why he would leave that behind for a life of crime. He said his brother had two children and whenever something went wrong in the Brazil area, police was always knocking on Hernandez's door to interrogate him. He said since Daniel and his brother were inseparable in life, he would seek to have the both of them buried together.
Relatives of Daniel, 38, a father of three, spoke nothing of him having a criminal past. Instead they painted him as a hard-working man who was close friends with Hernandez.
Daniel lived in Maloney and sometimes stayed with the mother of his child in La Horquetta. They said Daniel was a skilled at installing tiles and whenever he was contracted he would hire Hernandez
"It is very hard. I don't know how we are going to get through this but he is already dead. God will be the judge of everything. I just want to put him to rest, and leave everything else in the hands of God," his mother, who did not want to be named, said.
The two men were among six men killed in the Northern Division on Thursday. There were two other murders in St Joseph and Tobago on Thursday night which took the murder toll to 34 in 20 days. Last year, for the month of January, 49 people had been killed.