Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice in the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau were kept busy on Thurs­day night in­to yes­ter­day morn­ing, as two sep­a­rate mur­ders were re­port­ed in Tu­na­puna and Ari­ma.

In the lat­est in­ci­dent at around 1.40 am yes­ter­day, res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing gun­shots on Man­an Road, off the Ari­ma Old Road, but did not ven­ture out­side to in­ves­ti­gate. Hours passed be­fore neigh­bours checked on res­i­dent Dex­ter McMil­lan, 29, where they found him in his home with gun­shot wounds.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day, Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors were seen can­vass­ing McMil­lan’s home in search of ev­i­dence and oth­er clues to his mur­der.

Sev­er­al emo­tion­al rel­a­tives had to be con­soled as oth­er irate res­i­dents loud­ly called for jus­tice, while con­demn­ing McMil­lan’s mur­der.

One neigh­bour, who asked not to be named, said McMil­lan was re­cent­ly in­volved in a dis­pute with a new­com­er to the area, whom he de­scribed as a “bul­ly.” The neigh­bour said the dis­pute be­gan when the man tried to cut and re­con­nect one of McMil­lan’s wa­ter pipelines with­out his per­mis­sion.

Re­call­ing his last con­ver­sa­tion with McMil­lan on Thurs­day night, hours be­fore his mur­der, the neigh­bour said he en­cour­aged him to keep to him­self and steer clear of any trou­ble de­spite the threats against him.

“The last thing he told me was that he had to wake up ear­ly the fol­low­ing morn­ing (Fri­day morn­ing) and he had to get some sleep.

I re­mem­bered hear­ing the gun­shot. At first, I thought it was some­body throw­ing big stones on a roof, be­cause that hap­pened re­cent­ly, but it was on­ly the fol­low­ing morn­ing when I woke up, I found out he (McMil­lan) died.”

The neigh­bour said he was deeply shak­en af­ter McMil­lan’s mur­der, adding he felt Man­an Road, which was a pre­dom­i­nant­ly farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty, was un­der threat from the per­son who used vi­o­lence to get his way. In the first in­ci­dent, po­lice said 25-year-old Alex Sama­roo was lim­ing with friends on Cen­te­nary Street, Tu­na­puna, at around 9.45 pm, when he got in­to an ar­gu­ment with an­oth­er per­son known to him.

The sus­pect re­port­ed­ly pulled out a knife and stabbed Sama­roo twice in his chest be­fore run­ning away.

Passers-by took Sama­roo to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, where he was de­clared dead at around 11.09 pm.