KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A brazen hit in Pointe-a-Pierre yes­ter­day left hun­dreds of com­muters hor­ri­fied, a PH taxi dri­ver dead, and his pas­sen­ger nurs­ing a gun­shot wound. Rishi Et­wa­roo, 45, of St Mar­garet’s Vil­lage, Clax­ton Bay, died af­ter a gun­man shot him in the head along the South­ern Main Road.

While in­ves­ti­ga­tors are yet to de­ter­mine a mo­tive for Et­wa­roo’s mur­der, they said he was known for drugs, firearms and kid­nap­ping of­fences. They said the mur­der was not a rob­bery as his killer did not take mon­ey or per­son­al items.
A re­port said Et­wa­roo was work­ing the Cou­va to San Fer­nan­do route and was dri­ving South along the South­ern Main Road when around 8.30 am, a back seat pas­sen­ger asked to drop off at Re­flec­tion Guest House.

As the pas­sen­ger ex­it­ed the car, he pulled out a gun and shot Et­wa­roo in the head. The gun­man ran down the street to the side of the guest house and dis­ap­peared.
De­tec­tives of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions– Re­gion Three, in­clud­ing ASP Per­sad, Cpl Grif­fith and Cpl Ju­lans­ingh, re­spond­ed and in­ter­viewed sev­er­al peo­ple.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors processed the scene while South­ern Di­vi­sion’s ASP Jaikaran, In­sp Phillip, Sgt Doonath and Sgt Bis­nath re­spond­ed and co­or­di­nat­ed a search for the sus­pect, who they could not find up to the late af­ter­noon.
A Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer ex­am­ined Et­wa­roo’s body and or­dered its re­moval to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James. Po­lice al­so wrecked his black Toy­ota Corol­la Field­er wag­on to a po­lice sta­tion.
Po­lice said the bul­let ex­it­ed Et­wa­roo’s head and struck a fe­male pas­sen­ger in her shoul­der. Some­one took her to the Cou­va Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where medics at­tend­ed to her and trans­ferred her to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said her in­jury was not life-threat­en­ing.