Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Cunu­pia busi­ness own­ers say they fear in­creas­ing crime in the area but feel hope­less as they don’t think any­where is safe.

They spoke with Guardian Me­dia anony­mous­ly yes­ter­day, two days af­ter three men were mur­dered out­side the Cunu­pia branch of Piz­za Boys and Rit­u­als.

Coast Guard mem­ber Dave Lyons, 24, Jah-Mar­ley God­dard, 23, both of Sea Trace, Diego Mar­tin, and Earl Pe­ters Jr, 33, went to pur­chase chillers around noon. On re­turn­ing to their car, a sil­ver Sub­aru Im­preza, an­oth­er ve­hi­cle slammed in­to them. Two gun­men came out and opened fire be­fore es­cap­ing.

There were mixed views from cus­tomers. One woman said she did not know the killings took place out­side the fast food out­let and had she known, she would have gone to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion.

Work­ers said col­leagues who were on du­ty at the time of the in­ci­dent were giv­en coun­selling. They com­plained about the in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty of cus­tomers who jok­ing­ly asked them if they need­ed bul­let­proof vests.

The own­er of a near­by busi­ness said she had to set aside her de­spair, fear and un­cer­tain­ty as busi­ness must go on. She said the triple killing was trag­ic and made busi­ness own­ers feel un­safe but there was vi­o­lence through­out the coun­try and re­lo­cat­ing was not an op­tion.

Coun­cil­lor Richard Sukdeo said more than 15,000 res­i­dents in the dis­trict lived in con­stant fear of be­ing at­tacked by crim­i­nals. He ap­pealed for in­creased po­lice pa­trols.

“I was speak­ing to the po­lice at the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion, and they were telling me that there is a lack of re­sources. They need the man­pow­er and ve­hi­cles,” he said

Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit said she is wait­ing on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to re­spond to sev­er­al let­ters call­ing for him to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion in the area.

Hel­da Burke, a pen­sion­er who lives on Chin Chin Road, said she feels hope­less and can’t read the news­pa­per.

“You don’t know what to do again!” she com­plained.

A food stall ven­dor ad­mit­ted that he was “work­ing through the fear” and some res­i­dents re­port­ed that see­ing “strange faces” in their com­mu­ni­ties made them un­easy.

“Crime get­ting so com­mon now that nowhere safe,” one woman said. “Is on­ly so much po­lice could do.”

A busi­ness own­er who has lived in the area for more than 30 years said the triple killing left a “scary feel­ing” in the com­mu­ni­ty.