Shas­tri Boodan

Res­i­dents of Fe­lic­i­ty scram­bled for cov­er yes­ter­day morn­ing, af­ter a man, be­lieved to be a Venezue­lan na­tion­al, al­leged­ly fired sev­er­al rounds from a hand­gun while rid­ing a bi­cy­cle through the com­mu­ni­ty.

Fe­lic­i­ty coun­cil­lor Sun­dar Jookoo said the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 10 am, when the man rode from Pan­cham Street to­wards Nolan Street, near the Youngstars Recre­ation Ground, and fired mul­ti­ple rounds in­to the air from what ap­peared to be a 9mm hand­gun.

Jookoo likened the in­ci­dent to some­thing out of the Wild West. He said res­i­dents ini­tial­ly thought the sounds were fire­crack­ers.

He said the shoot­ing had height­ened res­i­dents’ fears and added to their frus­tra­tion over what he de­scribed as per­sis­tent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, noise pol­lu­tion and dis­re­gard for the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Jookoo is call­ing for a Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) to be im­ple­ment­ed in the area, along with a per­ma­nent po­lice post to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty and re­store res­i­dents’ con­fi­dence.

He said res­i­dents could no longer tol­er­ate the sit­u­a­tion and want­ed ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion from the au­thor­i­ties be­fore it es­ca­lat­ed fur­ther.

Ch­agua­nas po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.