Sascha Wilson
Seventeen-year-old Khriston Cooper was not a trouble maker at his school, but influenced easily.
Cooper, a Form Five student of Mayaro Secondary, was one of three robbery suspects killed by the police during an alleged shoot-out in Mayaro on Sunday night.
One of the other suspects, Zackary “Cori” Gilbert, 19, was a former student at the school.
In an interview with reporters, Cooper’s principal, Roger Morales, is hopeful that their deaths do not go in vain and helps steer young people away from a life of crime.
He said he last saw Cooper at school about a week before the incident.
Describing Cooper as a regular school child, he said, “Kriston never gave a lot of trouble. We do not have many suspensions (for him), but he was the type of person who was very helpful but very influenced by peer pressure and by friends. This is one of those unfortunate situations where he may have gotten carried away with persons who influenced him at that moment.”
He said social workers and guidance councillors are in contact with his family and at the school counselling students.
The principal said they offered condolences and observed a minute silence at the school’s assembly. “We spoke to the students to try to keep away from those who can easily influence them. They may think at the time it is something exciting and not understand the full ramifications of the dangers involved. Peer pressure and all of that,” he said.
He described Gilbert as a difficult student who was “self willed and prone to having his own way.”
A police report said shortly before 9 pm, a 41-year-old KFC delivery driver went to Mischier Road to drop off an order.
He, instead, got robbed by four suspects armed with a gun, cutlass and knife. Cooper, Gilbert and Antonio “Matta” St Rose, 21, were killed in an allegedly shoot-out with the police at an abandoned beach house off Church Road. The other suspect escaped and is still at large.
