Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While con­cerned about the spate and un­pre­dictable na­ture of vi­o­lent crime, Ari­ma ven­dors say they will con­tin­ue their dai­ly rou­tines, al­beit with greater cau­tion, af­ter two men were gunned down in the bor­ough’s com­mer­cial cen­tre ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Po­lice said Kei­th Ben­jamin Spencer and Ju­nior “Roti” Castil­lo were lim­ing at a bar near the cor­ner of Queen and Far­fan Streets around 2.43 am when gun­men drove up in a car. The as­sailants ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle and opened fire, killing one of the men. The oth­er at­tempt­ed to flee but one of the gun­men chased him be­fore shoot­ing and killing him. The at­tack­ers then re­turned to the ve­hi­cle and drove away.

Ari­ma po­lice of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to the scene along with a dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer, who pro­nounced Spencer and Castil­lo dead.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene short­ly af­ter 8 a.m. on Sat­ur­day, stores were open­ing and road­side ven­dors were con­duct­ing busi­ness de­spite the blood­shed that had un­fold­ed just hours ear­li­er.

One road­side ven­dor, who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Daniel, said he was near­by when the shoot­ing oc­curred and re­called the pan­ic that fol­lowed.

“We were lim­ing right by the bar when the car pulled up. A man ran out and just start­ed to pelt shots,” he said.

“The place is re­al­ly scary. I’m 41 years old and I have two daugh­ters. I have some­thing to live for, so to see this wasn’t nice.”

Daniel sug­gest­ed that there should be a more vis­i­ble po­lice pres­ence in the area af­ter dark, not­ing that ar­gu­ments and fights fre­quent­ly oc­curred near­by.

“I find the po­lice have to move fast. They know where all the crim­i­nals are. It’s noth­ing to have two of­fi­cers out here be­cause this area ac­cus­tomed hav­ing prob­lems.”

An­oth­er man, who said he was buy­ing soup from a near­by ven­dor at the time, re­called hear­ing the gun­shots and im­me­di­ate­ly tak­ing cov­er be­hind a con­crete pil­lar.

“As soon as I heard the pops from be­hind me, I knew it was some­thing bad.

“I just turned my head and pressed my body against the con­crete there and wait­ed for about 20 min­utes with­out mov­ing a mus­cle.”

A pro­duce ven­dor, who de­clined to give his name, said that while the mur­ders were trou­bling, many peo­ple in Ari­ma had be­come de­sen­si­tised to vi­o­lence be­cause of its fre­quen­cy.

“Long ago, in the 60s and 70s, the com­mu­ni­ty would have been up in arms, but nowa­days it’s hap­pen­ing so of­ten that peo­ple are numb to it.

“There are peo­ple who wit­nessed it and are talk­ing about it like it’s just an­oth­er piece of news.

“It hap­pened right in the vicin­i­ty, so it’s shock­ing to know it could hap­pen right here, but we have pro­grammed our­selves to un­der­stand that these things can hap­pen in front of or­di­nary peo­ple who are ply­ing their trade and try­ing to make a liv­ing.”

Se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras were in­stalled on light poles on ei­ther side of the street.

Guardian Me­dia al­so vis­it­ed Castil­lo’s Heights of Gua­napo home on Sat­ur­day. Rel­a­tives de­clined to com­ment, say­ing they were too emo­tion­al.

Alexan­der: Com­mu­ni­ties must work with po­lice

Re­spond­ing to the at­tack dur­ing a meet­ing and back-to-school book dis­tri­b­u­tion at his El Do­ra­do Road con­stituen­cy of­fice on Sat­ur­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der said that while every mur­der was trag­ic, com­mu­ni­ties must be will­ing to share in­for­ma­tion with law en­force­ment to help iden­ti­fy per­pe­tra­tors.

Alexan­der, who was al­so speak­ing to re­porters af­ter fa­cil­i­tat­ing a meet­ing be­tween Trini­bad artistes Meschach Em­manuel, bet­ter known as “Plumpy Boss,” and Kashif Sankar, alias “K Man,” em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of em­pow­er­ing com­mu­ni­ties to re­solve con­flicts with­out re­sort­ing to vi­o­lence.

He said the lat­est in­ci­dent in Ari­ma un­der­scored the need for peo­ple to find healthy and pos­i­tive ways to ad­dress dis­putes.

“Sit­u­a­tions like this show that the com­mu­ni­ty must come out and say what is hap­pen­ing be­cause some­times we don’t know. There are peo­ple who are hav­ing is­sues among them­selves, and the on­ly way they feel they can deal with some­thing is through gun war­fare,” Alexan­der said

Alexan­der added that he had “heard some things” about the dou­ble mur­der but urged the pub­lic to be pa­tient and al­low in­ves­ti­ga­tors to com­plete their work.

Ari­ma busi­ness­man Chris­t­ian Ram­per­sad de­scribed the mur­ders as par­tic­u­lar­ly painful be­cause he knew Castil­lo per­son­al­ly.

He said Castil­lo, who worked with the Forestry Di­vi­sion, was a friend­ly and easy-go­ing in­di­vid­ual who en­joyed so­cial­is­ing and was not known to be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“I don’t know him to be any­thing un­to­ward. He’s a limer who hangs out.

“He’s a re­al­ly jovial char­ac­ter, and I don’t un­der­stand it, to be hon­est. None of his col­leagues men­tioned any­thing to me, so it’s re­al­ly shock­ing to hear this hap­pened to him.”

De­scrib­ing the killings as “ex­e­cu­tion-style mur­ders,” Ram­per­sad said the in­ci­dent had raised con­cerns among busi­ness­peo­ple and res­i­dents in the bor­ough.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing pub­lic con­cerns about crime, he dis­agreed with sug­ges­tions that the area was par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous. In­stead, he de­scribed it as a high-traf­fic lo­ca­tion due to the heavy vol­ume of pedes­tri­ans and ve­hi­cles pass­ing through the in­ter­sec­tion.

“That area has a lot of traf­fic be­cause there are a cou­ple of taxi stands there, and there’s con­stant foot traf­fic be­cause of a very pop­u­lar soup ven­dor. I don’t think it’s a par­tic­u­lar se­cu­ri­ty risk, but there are a lot of peo­ple pass­ing through, so in­ci­dents can hap­pen. This is un­ac­cept­able. This type of be­hav­iour in mod­ern so­ci­ety is re­al­ly un­ac­cept­able.”

Of­fi­cers of the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mur­ders.

No mo­tive had been es­tab­lished up to Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.