Three incidents, three hours apart on Wednesday night raised the murder toll for 2019 by three to five.
In the first of those incidents at Calvary Hill, Arima, Kyron “Beetle” Bartholomew was gunned down as he reversed his AD Wagon down a hill onto Prince Street at around 7:40 pm. CCTV cameras captured the murder, with the killer emerging from a nearby yard as Bartholomew reversed onto Prince Street.
The gunman opened fire as Bartholomew attempted to escape. He was fatally hit and his car crashed into a wall.
The gunman fled on foot.
Bartholomew, 24, was taken to the Arima Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Police said Bartholomew had been previously questioned in relation to murder last year but had been released. It was not clear if his death was a reprisal act, they said.
About two hours later, 23-year-old Keenan Smith was stabbed to death in Curepe following an argument with two men near the corner of Bushe and Woodford Streets shortly before 10 pm.
The argument erupted into violence when Smith grabbed a stone and threw it in the direction of his adversaries. One of the men went to a nearby house and returned with a knife. Smith was overpowered by the duo, stabbed and left for dead.
Residents in the area came to his aid and called for an ambulance, but Smith was pronounced dead at the hospital.
At the scene, Smith’s slipper was left a short distance from where the bloody fracas took place.
Two teenagers, aged 16 and 17, were arrested after patrons at a nearby bar stopped them from escaping and turned them over to police called to the scene. They remained in police custody up to yesterday evening.
In another incident about 30 minutes later in Malabar, Kelvin Dexter Rennie was shot in the head.
Residents of Ackbarali Trace Extension said just after 10.30 pm, gunshots were heard in the area and they found the victim lying in the roadway bleeding from a gunshot wound.
Rennie, 32, of Point Cumana, Carenage, was taken to the Arima Health Facility, then transferred to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex where he died at around noon.
These incidents took the murder toll for the year to five.
