Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of a crime hot spot in Pleas­antville are trau­ma­tised fol­low­ing a dou­ble mur­der at their apart­ment com­plex on Wednes­day night.

They cow­ered in their homes as a gun­man opened fire on best friends Crys­ton “Ming” Lind­sey, 30, and Kevon “Faces” An­drews, 31. Stray bul­lets struck the win­dows of res­i­dents’ apart­ments, the walls, and PVC pipes. For­tu­nate­ly, no one was in­jured. Lind­sey’s leg was in a cast af­ter suf­fer­ing a bro­ken leg in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent two weeks ago.

An­drews was lim­ing with Lind­sey in front of his (Lind­s­ley) apart­ment door at Build­ing C on the first floor of the HDC build­ings at Or­chid Gar­dens short­ly af­ter 8 pm when a man ran up the stair­case and opened fire on them. Res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia Lind­sey jumped over the rail­ing and land­ed about 12 feet on the ground. He grabbed sev­er­al near­by beer bot­tles and be­gan launch­ing them at the gun­man as he cried out for help.

Nei­ther his neigh­bours nor his fam­i­ly could help him as the sus­pect con­tin­ued fir­ing at him. A res­i­dent who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said, “We just heard some loud gun­shots, sev­er­al, sev­er­al is more than sev­en, and with that set of gun­shots ring­ing out, we end up get­ting calm, and with that calm neigh­bours tried to make an at­tempt to come out­side be­cause we were hear­ing one of the vic­tim, Ming, cry­ing, bawl­ing out for help. ‘Mum­my help me, al­lyuh help me.’

“And while we try­ing to come to his aid, we heard a sec­ond set of gun­shots. No­body could come out­side to help him. When we do get a chance to come out­side we see Kris­t­ian bleed­ing, not know­ing that Faces, Kevon, died, or got shot. The whole build­ing was in dis­may, can’t be­lieve what hap­pened.”

The res­i­dent said Lind­sey was shot sev­er­al times, in­clud­ing in his neck and chest, but he was con­scious. An­drews passed away at the scene.

Wip­ing tears away, the woman said, “He tried his best to save him­self.” She was up­set over the non-ar­rival of an am­bu­lance and the po­lice’s fail­ure to take Lind­say to the hos­pi­tal.

“Af­ter ten min­utes, 20 min­utes, 30 min­utes, 40 min­utes, 45 min­utes, the am­bu­lance was still not on its way. We, the res­i­dents, asked the of­fi­cers what to do, and the of­fi­cers made it clear to us that they can­not pick up the civil­ian and put them in the ve­hi­cle be­cause it is not their mat­ter,” she lament­ed.

She said a res­i­dent took Lind­say to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in his ve­hi­cle. Lind­say and An­drews were for­mer dance­hall artistes, but she said they gave up the en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness and changed their lives.

“It is very sad be­cause they are my neigh­bours, is not now I know them. No­body is per­fect. I could say that they were liv­ing their life for God, try­ing their best. They had their past, your past don’t de­fine no hu­man be­ing. Your past is your past,” she said.

The res­i­dent said Lind­sey worked in a gro­cery, but they were al­ways look­ing for work. Con­cerned about the mur­der rate, she said the mur­ders were be­ing car­ried out by peo­ple who don’t know God.

“Is some­thing that needs to be dealt with spir­i­tu­al­ly on a lev­el where we need to have faith and pray and ask for pro­tec­tion, guid­ance, love, and for­give­ness. These are the things we need to make our­selves a bet­ter so­ci­ety, a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go. Look what go­ing on out­side here, evil is out there. We need to have faith,” she said.

Re­call­ing that last Jan­u­ary an­oth­er dou­ble mur­der oc­curred near the build­ing, she called on HDC to in­stall sur­veil­lance cam­eras in and around the build­ings. When mem­bers of the me­dia were at the build­ing yes­ter­day, a pass­ing po­lice ve­hi­cle was flagged down and in­formed of sev­er­al shell cas­ings were still scat­tered in the build­ing. The of­fi­cers came out of their ve­hi­cle and col­lect­ed the cas­ings. Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.