Po­lice be­lieve gang turf war is be­hind the killing of Care­nage res­i­dent 35-year-old Mar­cus Haynes.

Haynes was lim­ing with a group of men at about 8.40 pm on Thurs­day when gun­men opened fire on them.

Haynes was shot sev­er­al times, in­clud­ing the chest, arms and legs. He was tak­en to the St James In­fir­mary where he died while un­der­go­ing med­ical treat­ment. Po­lice said it is be­lieved that the gang war be­tween two ri­val gangs in the area—the Mus­lims and Ras­ta City has resurged.

Sev­er­al res­i­dents in the area have ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the shoot­ings and have called for a height­ened po­lice pres­ence.

A res­i­dent of the area, whose grand­son was al­so mur­dered in the on­go­ing turf war, said the po­lice some­times do not even take their calls.

“When we hear gun­shots or see peo­ple with guns in their hands and we try­ing to call the po­lice sta­tion is ei­ther the phones ring­ing off the hook or busy tone. When you do get through, the po­lice will take the ad­dress but then that’s it...you look­ing out for them and they not even dri­ving past.”

“When they do see po­lice dri­ving through the streets is ei­ther they in the area to check some­body out, drop some­body off or they dri­ving so fast in and out, not stop­ping to search no­body on the streets or even stop­ping to talk to the old peo­ple like me to find out how we fare in this place that has got­ten so, so ter­ri­ble. It not safe for we to walk the streets again,” the 75-year-old man said.

Coun­cil­lor for Care­nage Akeila Glas­gow ad­mit­ted that she was in no po­si­tion to “de­ter­mine which crimes are gang-re­lat­ed,” but not­ed that crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty has been “spo­radic.”

“The Care­nage area is a mi­cro­cosm of what is hap­pen­ing in wider T&T and, as you know, res­i­dents are con­cerned as crime is the num­ber 1 con­cern in the coun­try,” she said.

Glas­gow said she was cur­rent­ly en­gaged in a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the po­lice and the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion, called the Na­tion­al Crime Pre­ven­tion Pro­gramme, which has been es­tab­lished to tack­le com­mu­ni­ty is­sues.

“So the line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween my of­fice and that of the po­lice is open,” Glas­gow said.

Haynes is the 12th per­son to be mur­dered this year.