Pe­ter Christo­pher

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Two more mur­ders yes­ter­day took the 2023 mur­der toll so far to 496.

The shoot­ings took place in St Ann’s and the Uri­ah But­ler High­way.

In St Ann’s, an evening get-to­geth­er near a bar turned dead­ly when gun­men opened fire on a group of men, killing one and wound­ing three oth­ers.

The men were gath­ered close to the 69 Sports Bar and Grill on St Ann’s Road, Port-of-Spain, around 5 pm, when gun­men emerged and opened fire.

One man died on the scene, two were tak­en to hos­pi­tal, while a third man who was wound­ed was re­port­ed run­ning in the di­rec­tion of Cas­cade to es­cape his at­tack­ers. First re­spon­ders were not able to con­firm his lo­ca­tion when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area last evening.

The de­ceased has been iden­ti­fied as Franz Levine a se­cu­ri­ty guard.

Res­i­dents said two gun­men were seen run­ning through the area fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, and po­lice were said to be search­ing the area for them.

The search, cou­pled with the fact that St Ann’s Road had been blocked off be­fore the ar­rival of the Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer and the re­moval of the body from the scene led to sig­nif­i­cant traf­fic head­ing in­to the area. Mo­torists head­ing out of the area al­so faced dis­rup­tions.

The in­ci­dent took place just three days af­ter Daryl Bou­caud, 36, was al­so shot and killed at Symond Val­ley Road in St Ann’s.

These in­ci­dents, Guardian Me­dia was told, had made res­i­dents in­creas­ing­ly un­easy about the grow­ing trend of vi­o­lence in the com­mu­ni­ty.

In an ear­li­er in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, an Ari­ma man was found dead on the shoul­der of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way.

Around 2 pm, po­lice were alert­ed to the van which had been parked on the shoul­der of the north­bound lane of the high­way, a short dis­tance from the Ca­roni Fly­over, for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.

When of­fi­cers ap­proached the ve­hi­cle, they found the body of 53-year-old Andy Daniel slumped be­hind the wheel, and the van had bul­let holes.

Daniel, who lived at the Cross­ings in Ari­ma, ap­peared to have been shot sev­er­al times.

His body was re­moved from the scene short­ly af­ter 3 pm.

Po­lice are still try­ing to as­cer­tain the mo­tive for the killing.