Sto­ries

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

De­spite re­peat­ed calls from fam­i­ly to change his life and stop as­so­ci­at­ing with crim­i­nals, a rel­a­tive of mur­dered Mt Lam­bert res­i­dent Afi­ba Moral­do said yes­ter­day that he con­tin­ued the lifestyle which even­tu­al­ly led to his death.

Po­lice said Moral­do, 36, was chased in­to a rel­a­tive’s busi­ness on Mt Lam­bert Cir­cu­lar Road on Sun­day morn­ing and shot dead.

The killers then got back in a black Maz­da 323 and es­caped.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, one of his rel­a­tives said Moral­do was an af­fil­i­ate of the Ras­ta City gang and was warned against con­tin­u­ing such a lifestyle.

Moral­do, the rel­a­tive said, did not heed the warn­ings and pre­dict­ed his own mur­der, as he spoke fre­quent­ly about his own death and even made arrange­ments for fam­i­ly mem­bers as he ex­pect­ed his pass­ing.

Re­call­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with Moral­do last Wednes­day, the rel­a­tive said he men­tioned the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his own mur­der hap­pen­ing soon.

The rel­a­tive said, “He know things was on him, for him to be in the game he knew cer­tain things be­cause we had a dis­cus­sion. He said ‘boy you know they want to kill me, they go­ing to kill me’. He said things like ‘This one died, an­oth­er one died, now I’m the last one’.

“He had it in his mind that he had to com­plete cer­tain tasks for the rest of the fam­i­ly to be safe.

“Some peo­ple might say that was just how he used to talk, but he knew what was go­ing to hap­pen.”

The fam­i­ly mem­ber said de­spite his trou­bled past, he felt Moral­do was not a bad per­son and de­scribed him as an “ac­tor” who played the role of a crim­i­nal to fit in with friends.

He said Moral­do’s in­ter­ests were main­ly women and he was re­luc­tant to get in­volved in crime.

The rel­a­tive said Moral­do was the last of three broth­ers.

In 2021, Mar­lon Moral­do, the el­dest of the broth­ers, was shot and killed in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing on the same street as his younger broth­er on Sun­day.

Not­ing that he and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers tried re­peat­ed­ly to get the younger Moral­do to change his life, the rel­a­tive ad­mit­ted it was dif­fi­cult. He al­so called on oth­er fam­i­lies and par­ents not to give up on steer­ing their chil­dren away from crim­i­nal­i­ty, not­ing that while dis­ci­pline was cru­cial, sim­ply scold­ing rel­a­tives for wrong­do­ing was not the an­swer.

He said, “Talk to them and let them know what’s on your mind. Don’t sug­ar-coat it or hide any­thing. Speak to them plain­ly be­cause they know what they’re do­ing is wrong,” he said.

“Tell them how that kind of be­hav­iour is hurt­ing them and the fam­i­ly. Let them know how they lost loved ones. Even try to help them be­cause some youths think the fam­i­ly is on­ly there to bouff them. Give them some care.”

The rel­a­tive said Moral­do had a four-year-old daugh­ter and re­cent­ly opened an ice cream busi­ness out of his home.