Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

A 42-year-old fish ven­dor was fa­tal­ly shot in Diego Mar­tin on Sun­day night. He has been iden­ti­fied as Mar­ley “Dog” Bal­lan­tyne, of North West Dri­ve, Pat­na Vil­lage, Diego Mar­tin.

At about 8.40 pm, res­i­dents of Ci­ca­da Dri­ve, off Riv­er Es­tate, heard rapid gun­fire and called the po­lice.

West­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice of­fi­cers found Bal­lan­tyne’s body at the en­trance to a bas­ket­ball court in the area.

He had been shot mul­ti­ple times, in­clud­ing in the head and chest.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are al­so con­tin­u­ing in­to the mur­der of Jessie Mas­call, at about 12.30 am on Sun­day at Ravine Road, Pe­tit Val­ley.

Po­lice of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a re­port of a COVID-19 par­ty went to the lo­ca­tion and saw a group of per­sons par­ty­ing.

The of­fi­cers warned the group and or­dered them to go to their re­spec­tive homes.

How­ev­er, the group ig­nored the of­fi­cers’ warn­ing and the par­ty re­sumed.

Min­utes lat­er, gun­men am­bushed them and Mas­call was shot dead.

At the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day, Mas­call’s rel­a­tives claimed po­lice and fire of­fi­cers were among the par­ty-go­ers and wit­nessed the shoot­ing.

How­ev­er, they have not yet gone to the po­lice al­though they all know the iden­ti­ty of the shoot­er, said the rel­a­tives, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied.

In an­oth­er in­ci­dent, a man was shot and wound­ed yes­ter­day af­ter­noon at Trou Macaque in Laven­tille.

At about 2 pm, res­i­dents heard gun­shots and found the uniden­ti­fied man bleed­ing from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds.

He was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he is ward­ed in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.