Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son

@guardian.co.tt

An­oth­er brazen mur­der has claimed the life of a 39-year-old South Oropouche fa­ther, reignit­ing ur­gent calls for stronger ac­tion to com­bat crime, in­clud­ing the re­sump­tion of hang­ings.

Shan­don Ar­joon was shot around 11.20 am along South­ern Main Road in South Oropouche near the un­der­pass yes­ter­day.

He had re­cent­ly pur­chased a par­cel of land at that lo­ca­tion on which he was con­struct­ing a build­ing for com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial use.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, he was stand­ing near the site when a gun­man crossed the road, and fired two shots at him. As Ar­joon col­lapsed, the gun­man ran off and was seen chang­ing his clothes as he made his es­cape.

Ar­joon’s fa­ther, Kei­th Ar­joon, gath­ered at the scene along with his wife and oth­er rel­a­tives as crime scene and homi­cide de­tec­tives processed the scene. Ar­joon’s fa­ther said he did not know why some­one would kill his son. “Shan­don don’t gam­ble, drink or smoke. I don’t know why some­one will do this,” he said. While he is hop­ing to even­tu­al­ly find out who pulled the trig­ger or why, he had no con­fi­dence that his son’s mur­der would be solved.

“They just need to break neck,” said the griev­ing fa­ther, who be­lieves that if con­vict­ed mur­der­ers face the hang­man, mur­ders in the coun­try would de­crease.

He said the per­pe­tra­tor ap­proached his son from the back, so he did not even get a chance to use his li­cenced firearm.

Mean­while, Ar­joon’s un­cle, Clint Ar­joon, who is al­so the pres­i­dent of the Fyz­abad Busi­ness Cham­ber, said his nephew told him he re­ceived threats, but he did not want to dis­close any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion that could pos­si­bly “dis­rupt the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

De­spite the po­lice and gov­ern­ment claims that crime has de­creased, Clint Ar­joon, who was a vic­tim of a kid­nap­ping and rob­bery, was not sat­is­fied that enough is be­ing done to erad­i­cate crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He said peo­ple were still mi­grat­ing be­cause of the crime sit­u­a­tion.

“I think that au­thor­i­ties still have to do more, and ac­tu­al­ly show that they are do­ing more, and not just talk about them do­ing more, be­cause this what hap­pened to­day, it hit close to home.” He added, “If you look, every year crime in this coun­try has on­ly been in­creas­ing, it not de­creas­ing. While the au­thor­i­ties might claim the num­bers are down be­cause of one po­lit­i­cal par­ty to the oth­er, I think they are still not do­ing enough.”

Lament­ing that Ar­joon was killed on his fa­ther’s birth­day, he said his nephew was in­volved in his fa­ther’s busi­ness, he was ded­i­cat­ed to his four-year-old daugh­ter and was a de­cent in­di­vid­ual.

Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo, who is al­so the coun­cil­lor for the elec­toral dis­trict where the mur­der oc­curred, lament­ed that nowhere is safe in T&T.

“The South­west­ern Di­vi­sion was once one of the safest places in the coun­try, and it seems as though nowhere is safe at this point in time.”

Though the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) bill was not passed due to the lack of sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, Mayrhoo was con­fi­dent that the Gov­ern­ment was putting mea­sures in place to curb crime. He said he al­so sup­ports the re­turn of hang­ings.

“If this Gov­ern­ment chose to go the way of the hang­man. I will ful­ly en­dorse that and sup­port that and speed up tri­als with­in the five-year term lim­it for tri­als and bring back the hang­man be­cause it seems that is the on­ly way we can curb the crime in this coun­try be­cause it seems as though nowhere is safe in this coun­try at this point in time.”

Not­ing that the crime sit­u­a­tion had got­ten out of hand, Mayrhoo ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to stop the sense­less killings and set­tle dis­putes us­ing non-vi­o­lent mea­sures. “I am call­ing on these gang­sters and gun­men to put down these guns. You are de­stroy­ing the fab­ric of this coun­try...and we can­not tol­er­ate it any­more.”

While there was spec­u­la­tion that Ar­joon’s mur­der was linked to a land dis­pute, homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors, up to last evening, were still try­ing to con­firm a mo­tive.