An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The mur­der toll rose to 300 yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the killings of two men in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in Ca­roni and Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day night.

Mean­while, the pass­ing of a pen­sion­er who was robbed and beat­en on Fri­day and sub­se­quent­ly died at hos­pi­tal is yet to be clas­si­fied.

In the first in­ci­dent around 10.23 pm on Ju­ly 8, Im­ran Khan, 40, of Ra­bindranath Trace, Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, was shot dead in a bar.

Re­ports in­di­cate the fa­ther of an 18-year-old boy was at the Riv­er View Bar, Ca­roni South Bank Road, Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, when of­fi­cers on pa­trol heard gun­shots com­ing from the es­tab­lish­ment.

Up­on check­ing, they found the painter ly­ing on his stom­ach on the ground in an open area, bleed­ing from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds.

The own­er/op­er­a­tor of the bar is Khan’s rel­a­tive.

The 56-year-old pro­pri­etress said she was in­side with a 35-year-old male rel­a­tive who is from San­ta Cruz, when the shoot­ing be­gan.

She lat­er emerged to find Khan, bleed­ing and un­re­spon­sive, while the sec­ond rel­a­tive was nowhere to be found. Eye­wit­ness­es claimed the gun­men es­caped on foot.

Khan’s rel­a­tives were un­able to hold back their tears yes­ter­day as they spoke to Guardian Me­dia.

They de­scribed the CarSearch em­ploy­ee as some­one who was ded­i­cat­ed to his job and his fam­i­ly.

Khan, a fe­male rel­a­tive said, “Al­ways in every­thing ... he know it all.He nev­er do any­thing for peo­ple to want to shoot him, be­cause he don’t re­al­ly go nowhere.”

Claim­ing he was a “Kel­ly boy” as he was al­ways close to home, she said the fam­i­ly was ac­cus­tomed to him go­ing to lime by the bar but were un­aware if he had been threat­ened by any­one. She lament­ed the crime sit­u­a­tion which she la­belled “ter­ri­ble”.

“It is about five or six men they kill on this road ... who is 40 years and younger, since the year be­gan,” she said. Asked what could be prompt­ing the killings in the area, she said, “I don’t know, we can’t say what caus­ing this.”

Fright­ened for her re­main­ing rel­a­tives, she urged them and oth­ers, “To keep away from the road cause out there is not safe.”

Khan, who was the first­born child for his fam­i­ly as well as the first boy, re­cent­ly changed his be­hav­iour by stay­ing out and lim­ing lat­er.

Re­veal­ing the de­ceased had al­ways been about his fam­i­ly and had even re­fused to move out as he just want­ed to stay close, they said he used to be in­side by 6 pm dai­ly and they be­lieved he was safe lim­ing by the bar as it was fam­i­ly owned.

In the sec­ond killing around 11.15 pm on Sat­ur­day, Ney­on Har­vey, 22, of Pavil­ion Dri­ve, Chrissie Ter­race En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, was shot at Man­dela Dri­ve.

Res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing gun­shots com­ing from Lendore Vil­lage, Chrissie Ter­race, En­ter­prise, and lat­er claimed to have seen a masked man armed with a ri­fle run­ning along the road in the vicin­i­ty of the Chrissie Ter­race Sa­van­nah.

Po­lice were di­rect­ed to a track at School Lane, off Wal­cott Lane, but checks for the sus­pect proved un­uc­cess­ful.

The deaths of Khan and Har­vey would have brought the na­tion­al mur­der toll to the 300 mark yes­ter­day. The TTPS on Fri­day said the year­ly mur­der toll stood at 296 ver­sus 278 last year.

With the mur­der toll for 2022 reach­ing 605—ex­perts have warned that this year’s to­tal could get up as high as or even more than last year’s. Mean­while, the month­ly av­er­age for mur­ders stood at 19 for the month of Ju­ly 2022; com­pared to ten for Ju­ly 2023 thus far.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has re­mained mum on the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion and has re­fused to di­vulge any in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to the ef­fec­tive­ness of the crime fight­ing mea­sures em­ployed.

And as mur­ders con­tin­ued yes­ter­day, cit­i­zens were crit­i­cal of the sit­u­a­tion gen­er­al­ly as they said it was ter­ri­ble and fright­en­ing.