An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The re­quest by for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young for De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge to be in­ter­viewed fol­low­ing his bomb­shell claim that two dead­ly shoot­ings in Mor­vant and Bel­mont were linked has been wel­comed by se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers.

Sturge made the state­ment dur­ing last Fri­day’s sit­ting of the Low­er House when he de­clared: “I’m sure he (MP for the area Stu­art Young) knows that the mur­ders yes­ter­day are con­nect­ed to the mur­ders in La­dy Young, the quadru­ple mur­der. It’s con­nect­ed. And we know where they are from. We know, we’ve seen all the wakes and all the cry­ing. We know Belle Eau Road is in play. We know Ser­raneau Road is in play.”

Young, the MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West, wrote to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on Mon­day urg­ing the TTPS to “in­ter­view the Min­is­ter to as­cer­tain who com­mit­ted the heinous mur­ders of nine-year-old J’Lay­na Arm­strong on April 19, and the mur­der of two-year-old Aki­ni Kafi on May 7, and what is his knowl­edge of same.”

Con­tact­ed on Mon­day, Sturge main­tained his po­si­tion that the two mass shoot­ings were con­nect­ed.

While at­tempts to reach both Sturge and Gue­var­ro proved un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day, a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial said Young’s re­quest was ap­pro­pri­ate if the min­is­ter pos­sessed in­for­ma­tion rel­e­vant to the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“I think that is the cor­rect move to make be­cause if he has in­for­ma­tion, I be­lieve he should share it with us,” the of­fi­cial said.

“We shouldn’t even have to ask. The right thing to do would be to come to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty and bring that in­for­ma­tion.”

The se­nior of­fi­cer said po­lice were not dis­miss­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Sturge may have had in­for­ma­tion which led him to make such cat­e­gor­i­cal state­ments in Par­lia­ment, not­ing that of­fi­cers work­ing in af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties may al­so have en­coun­tered sim­i­lar in­tel­li­gence.

The of­fi­cial ap­pealed to mem­bers of the pub­lic with in­for­ma­tion to con­tact the TTPS so that all tips could be as­sessed and ver­i­fied by in­ves­ti­ga­tors and in­tel­li­gence an­a­lysts.

Asked whether po­lice had in­de­pen­dent­ly un­cov­ered any ev­i­dence link­ing the in­ci­dents, the of­fi­cer said: “At this stage, we do not have any in­for­ma­tion that there is a link­age.”

He warned against mak­ing pub­lic de­c­la­ra­tions with­out sup­port­ing ev­i­dence.

“That would be reck­less at this stage,” the of­fi­cer added.

Nine-year-old J’Lay­na Arm­strong was among four peo­ple killed when gun­men am­bushed a ve­hi­cle along La­dy Young Road in Mor­vant.

In a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent along Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road in Bel­mont, Aqiyl “Fats” Kafi and An­tho­ny “Mon­ster” Wil­son were killed af­ter gun­men am­bushed their ve­hi­cle and opened fire.

Kafi’s 23-month-old son, Aki­ni Kafi, who was shot mul­ti­ple times dur­ing the at­tack, lat­er died at hos­pi­tal. His moth­er, An­to­nia Cain-Kafi, re­mains ward­ed in sta­ble con­di­tion in the In­ten­sive Care Unit of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.