An­drew Gioan­net­ti

Had Ha­keem Alexan­der's life not come to an end at 16 years, the 2013 Carif­ta bronze medal­ist would have brought fur­ther glo­ry to this coun­try while in his prime.So said Gun­ness Per­sad, coach at Sim­plex Ath­let­ic Club, which Alexan­der rep­re­sent­ed. Alexan­der, was one of two teenagers who were shot and killed by po­lice at Su­perville Hill, Laven­tille, close to his home, on Mon­day. The oth­er boy killed was his 15-year-old cousin Tevin Alexan­der.Their deaths was fol­lowed by con­flict­ing re­ports of the in­ci­dent from po­lice and neigh­bours. Po­lice have claimed they were shot at by the teenagers, while an eye­wit­ness said they were shot while sur­ren­der­ing in a kneel­ing po­si­tion with their arms raised.

Dur­ing his short ca­reer, Alexan­der, a for­mer stu­dent at Suc­cess Laven­tille Sec­ondary, racked up a host of ac­co­lades in­clud­ing a bronze medal in the Un­der-17 3000m event at last year's Carif­ta Games in the Ba­hamas, clock­ing 9:49.59. He al­so broke the na­tion­al pri­ma­ry schools' 3k record.Alexan­der, how­ev­er, did not com­pete for the year, ac­cord­ing to Per­sad, who said he en­tered him in a num­ber of meets in­clud­ing the 2014 Carif­ta tri­als.He might have won gold (at this year's Carif­ta Cham­pi­onship), but he did not com­pete this year in any of the events I signed him up in. He was se­ri­ous (about ath­let­ics). I don't know what went wrong," Per­sad said.

Per­sad not­ed that Alexan­der was one of six young ath­letes from Laven­tille who were re­cruit­ed by Sim­plex last year, fol­low­ing the ad­vice of a teacher of a pri­ma­ry school in Laven­tille.

"He def­i­nite­ly had the tal­ent. Many peo­ple liked him be­cause of his po­ten­tial. He was cool, calm and qui­et. He seemed to re­spect me. When he was with me, he lis­tened, just like the boys he was with. They were all cool," said Per­sad.He added, "Yes (I was shocked to hear the news). My main pur­pose was to help (the boys), show them out of pover­ty, show them that there are oth­er av­enues to suc­ceed in life, such as ath­let­ics."Alexan­der rarely trained with the club as it is based at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la, and fo­cus­es its train­ing rou­tines pri­mar­i­ly on sprints. The club cur­rent trains 45-50 run­ners, no­tably in­clud­ing Ke­ston Bled­man, Machel Ce­de­nio and Ka­maria Du­rant, all of whom Alexan­der could have joined in glo­ry had he re­mained alive.