De­spite hav­ing moved out from his old neigh­bour­hood of St John’s Road, St Au­gus­tine, and mov­ing on with his life, a rel­a­tive of mur­der vic­tim Mikail Voisin be­lieves his past af­fil­i­a­tions may be what led to the shoot­ing where he and an­oth­er man were killed Wednes­day night.

Po­lice said 23-year-old Voisin, al­so known as Mikail Her­nan­dez, and Aaron Le­an­der, were lim­ing at the Tu­na­puna Mar­ket, near the en­trance fac­ing the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR), with three oth­ers at at 8 pm when they were ap­proached by gun­men who shot at the group.

The gun­men then ran to a beige Nis­san Almera on the East­ern Main Road and es­caped.

Voisin died at the scene while Tu­na­puna Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice of­fi­cers rushed to the hos­pi­tal with the wound­ed vic­tims.

Le­an­der was de­clared dead at the hos­pi­tal short­ly af­ter, while a 22-year-old woman was shot in her chest and both arms, a 23-year-old man was shot in his right leg and a 34-year-old man was shot in his back and right thigh.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene on Wednes­day night, po­lice had cor­doned off the en­trance to the mar­ket from the PBR and the East­ern Main Road, as Voisin’s grief-strick­en rel­a­tives looked on from the side of the road.

One rel­a­tive said Voisin worked as a ven­dor to sup­port him­self sell­ing fruits at the mar­ket. He said Voisin re­cent­ly moved to San Juan but not­ed he was orig­i­nal­ly from St John’s Road, where a gang was known to op­er­ate.

The rel­a­tive said while Voisin may not have been in­volved in the crim­i­nal lifestyle, sim­ply min­gling and be­ing seen with cer­tain peo­ple may have been enough to place him in dan­ger.

“I was not too sur­prised to hear this hap­pened be­cause I know the in­di­vid­ual and I know who he as­so­ciates with.

“I know fam­i­ly who was in that neigh­bour­hood and who are try­ing to get out of there and life is hard,” the rel­a­tive said.

Re­fer­ring to a voice note which was cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia in the af­ter­math of a re­cent shoot­ing in the area, the rel­a­tive said peo­ple were cau­tioned to avoid ven­tur­ing out­doors and gath­er­ing in cer­tain ar­eas.

Al­so vis­it­ing the scene on Wednes­day night was Voisin’s fa­ther Sean Mod­este, who lament­ed the spate of killings in T&T.

Mod­este said he and his son re­cent­ly got back in­to con­tact with each oth­er af­ter some time apart, not­ing that Voisin was ex­pect­ed to cel­e­brate the first birth­day of his daugh­ter at the end of Jan­u­ary.

He said while he could not say whether or not his son was threat­ened or faced dan­ger from crim­i­nals, he did warn him about the dan­gers of stray bul­lets and how reck­less crim­i­nals had be­come.

“This Tu­na­puna is a hot zone, every­body should know that by now. Them is youths, any mes­sage will go in one ear and fly out the next ear. He may lis­ten, you know but he may not take me on,” Mod­este said.

Mod­este said he last in­ter­act­ed with his son on Christ­mas Day when he vis­it­ed him to get mon­ey to buy a shirt, but fre­quent­ly spoke with him as they re­con­nect­ed over Voisin’s daugh­ter.

Com­ment­ing on the ruth­less­ness of the gun­men, Mod­este said he was dis­tressed over the spate of killings and felt that crime was not im­prov­ing.

“For me and every­one else liv­ing in this coun­try should know this crime sit­u­a­tion get­ting worse each day.

“How much things can the po­lice do? The on­ly thing that can make a dif­fer­ence is if we get three no non­sense of­fi­cers like Gary Grif­fith.”

When Guardian Me­dia re­turned to Tu­na­puna Mar­ket yes­ter­day morn­ing, ven­dors said the shoot­ing hap­pened two hours af­ter the mar­ket closed at 6 pm.

The ven­dors, who did not even want their voic­es record­ed, stressed that while they were not at the mar­ket when the at­tack hap­pened, they were fear­ful as the at­tack high­light­ed the un­pre­dictable na­ture of crim­i­nals.

“A lot of peo­ple here don’t even want to talk about it. They feel if they hush and go on about their busi­ness it will go away, but it’s the kind of thing that will al­ways be around,” one ven­dor said.

An­oth­er ven­dor said even af­ter the mar­ket closed the area was a hub for the sale and pur­chase of drugs.

“Around here has a rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing a (drug) block, so you won’t see too much peo­ple pass­ing around here af­ter hours.”

Blood stains and cir­cles drawn in chalk to iden­ti­fy the lo­ca­tion of spent shells were still vis­i­ble on the walk­way out­side the mar­ket yes­ter­day.

While there, Le­an­der’s moth­er vis­it­ed the scene where her son died and be­gan cry­ing. The dis­traught moth­er had to be con­soled and sup­port­ed by an­oth­er woman at the scene.

Both de­clined to com­ment, save to say that Le­an­der was an em­ploy­ee with the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and was not a crim­i­nal.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen, in whose con­stituen­cy the Tu­na­puna Mar­ket falls, said the mur­ders of Voisin and Le­an­der were the lat­est episode in a se­ries of vi­o­lent in­ci­dents in and around St Au­gus­tine. She said such in­ci­dents should not be ig­nored and called for greater fo­cus from the po­lice in tack­ling crime.

Re­fer­ring to con­cerns ex­pressed to her by res­i­dents, Ameen said most peo­ple were fear­ful go­ing about their every­day ac­tiv­i­ties.

“I have been plead­ing with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, of­fer­ing not on­ly com­plaints but sug­ges­tions. We have asked them to put a mo­bile po­lice post and pa­trols in cer­tain ar­eas to quell this vi­o­lence to no avail.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) chair­man Josi­ah Austin, who con­demned the at­tack and of­fered con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the dead men. He not­ed that in­creased po­lice ac­tiv­i­ties and greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion and the Tu­na­puna Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice were ex­pect­ed to yield greater re­sults. These mea­sures, he said, would work in tan­dem with ef­forts to bet­ter se­cure the mar­ket through on­go­ing up­grade plans.

“This in­ci­dent will no way un­der­mine the re­solve of the cor­po­ra­tion ei­ther through the work of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice or the part­ner­ship with the TTPS,” Austin said.

“We have start­ed by bright­en­ing the out­skirts of the mar­ket which we part­nered with T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion to do and work with the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Coun­cil with se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras.”

Austin al­so com­mend­ed the work of the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice as first re­spon­ders in as­sist­ing the wound­ed peo­ple.

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion II are con­tin­u­ing their en­quiries.

As of Thurs­day af­ter­noon, there were nine mur­ders for the year thus far com­pared to five for the same pe­ri­od last year.