Jensen La Vende

The sins of one broth­er fell on an­oth­er, re­sult­ing in both men be­ing gunned down at their Diego Mar­tin home yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Po­lice re­ports stat­ed that Joshua and Jerome John­son, 33 and 31 re­spec­tive­ly, were at their home at Broome Street, La Puer­ta, around 9.45 when they were am­bushed and killed. Po­lice said gun­men came from the back of the house and shot Joshua be­fore head­ing to the front and killing his younger broth­er.

Po­lice said Joshua, an un­em­ployed fa­ther of two, had re­cent­ly moved back to the area af­ter he had ini­tial­ly fled be­cause he was ow­ing mon­ey for drugs he took on con­sign­ment.

Po­lice said that was their main the­o­ry on the mo­tive be­hind the killing of the two men in a rel­a­tive­ly qui­et neigh­bour­hood. Po­lice said Jerome was men­tal­ly chal­lenged but may have posed a threat to the killers while they were flee­ing the crime scene.

Res­i­dents told the T&T Guardian Joshua was marked for death, as peo­ple "want­ed he dead re­al bad." The claim was sup­port­ed by po­lice who said Joshua was in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and had tried to es­cape the con­se­quences by flee­ing the area. The broth­ers had two sis­ters who were po­lice of­fi­cers, res­i­dents said.

Speak­ing with the me­dia at the mur­der scene, coun­cil­lor for the area, Michael Alon­zo, said he was dis­turbed by the shoot­ing deaths in the qui­et com­mu­ni­ty.

He added he knew both men per­son­al­ly as res­i­dents in the area and liv­ing not too far from where they were mur­dered.

"What was re­al­ly dis­turb­ing to me is that one of them is men­tal­ly re­tard­ed and just up to this morn­ing I saw him and I gave him some­thing to eat. This is a qui­et area and noth­ing like this has ever hap­pened be­fore.

I think in the case of Jerome it was the wrong place at the wrong time," Alon­zo said.

"This was an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent and I hope the com­mu­ni­ty goes back to how it was.

As far as I am told there was one rel­a­tive who was around at the time of the in­ci­dent and she should re­ceive coun­selling along with the rest of the fam­i­ly."

Rel­a­tives of the men did not speak to mem­bers of the me­dia as they were too dis­traught.

The killing of the two men and an­oth­er in south Trinidad took the mur­der toll to 286 for the year com­pared to 258 for the same pe­ri­od last year.