One day af­ter the po­lice hi­er­ar­chy urged the na­tion not to pan­ic over the num­ber of mur­ders be­ing com­mit­ted in the coun­try, the killings con­tin­ued un­abat­ed. At least five mur­ders were record­ed be­tween Fri­day night and Sat­ur­day.

These in­ci­dents have pushed the mur­der toll for the year to 30 in 15 days, giv­ing an av­er­age of two mur­ders per day. Po­lice said on Fri­day Je­re­mi­ah Moti­lal, 41, was shot while walk­ing along the Train Line, Mal­abar, around 10 pm. Res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing gun­shots af­ter a car pulled along­side Moti­lal. He was rushed to the hos­pi­tal but was dead on ar­rival.

Mean­while, a shoot­ing at Church Street which is lo­cat­ed off By-Pass Road, Ari­ma, dur­ing the ear­ly hours Sat­ur­day morn­ing re­port­ed­ly left one man dead. A video post­ed to so­cial me­dia re­vealed an uniden­ti­fied man ly­ing face down in a drain, bleed­ing from gun­shot wounds. A woman who re­port­ed­ly knew the vic­tim, faint­ed at his side as she saw his body. She had to be re­vived by res­i­dents who rushed out to as­sist them both. An­oth­er man was fa­tal­ly shot at Lovell Place, East Dry Riv­er, Laven­tille, Sat­ur­day morn­ing while a woman was in­jured. Ker­win "Fish" Naswell, 46, who is from the area, was shot sev­er­al times as he stood in front of a par­lour, talk­ing to the woman who is al­so from the area. Foren­sic of­fi­cials re­port­ed high-pow­ered ri­fles were used in this in­ci­dent af­ter they re­trieved sev­er­al 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm shells at the scene.

In cen­tral Trinidad, the wife of re­tired po­lice of­fi­cer Daryl Jod­ha found his bloody body in a bed­room at their En­deav­our, Ch­agua­nas home Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Jod­ha, 57, had been con­fined to a wheel­chair since suf­fer­ing a stroke in 2015.

Last at­tached to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, Jod­ha had re­tired sev­er­al years ago. In­ves­ti­ga­tors were told that he slept down­stairs their town­house at the Oa­sis Greens Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, while his wife Nadi­ra Ram­per­sad and two chil­dren, ages nine and 11, slept up­stairs. Ram­per­sad awoke around 7.10 am and went down­stairs. She found the front door open. Ram­per­sad went in­to her hus­band's bed­room and found him ly­ing in blood on the ground next to the bed. His body had in­juries sim­i­lar to stab wounds. Rel­a­tives had no idea why some­one would want to harm him. Po­lice be­lieve the mo­tive was ei­ther rob­bery or do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed.

Mean­while, around 11.15 am yes­ter­day 31-year-old David­son Je­re­my was lim­ing with an­oth­er per­son at Boodram's Con­ve­nience Su­per­mar­ket near the stock­ing area in Tabaquite when a man wear­ing a long straight hair wig en­tered with a gun. The gun­man and Je­re­my had an ex­change of words and he then fired sev­er­al shots at Je­re­my. The gun­man ran a short dis­tance away and en­tered a pick­up van while Je­re­my stum­bled out of the busi­ness place, col­lapsed and died on the road.

Je­re­my, of Mor­tar Trace, Tabaquite, was un­em­ployed and had cel­e­brat­ed his birth­day on Fri­day. Po­lice are still try­ing to as­cer­tain a mo­tive.

A se­cu­ri­ty guard was re­port­ed­ly found un­re­spon­sive at his work­place on Sat­ur­day by col­leagues at Mex­i­co Road, Waller­field. How­ev­er, the po­lice have not clas­si­fied this death as a mur­der.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob at the TTPS week­ly press brief­ing as­sured the na­tion that mur­ders were not out of con­trol while As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wen­dell Williams urged the na­tion not to be alarmed by the surge in mur­ders.

They ex­plained that mur­ders in the coun­try tend to be high in Jan­u­ary–in Jan­u­ary 2021 there were 25 mur­ders, 46 mur­ders in Jan­u­ary 2020, 40 in Jan­u­ary 2019, 60 in 2018 and 52 in 2017. Ja­cob not­ed that about 60 per cent of mur­ders were linked to gang war­fare, while al­ter­ca­tions and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence ac­count­ed for an­oth­er 30 per cent. While in 2021 there were 499 mur­ders, he said it was with­in the 440 year­ly av­er­age over the last ten years.

Re­spond­ing to the lat­est mur­ders, Williams main­tained that there was no need for the pub­lic to pan­ic. "We do have surges at times, it is not the first time and so that's when I talked about not be­ing alarmed but I did say that we are con­cerned and our con­cern is not just a dor­man­cy." He said they are act­ing on it.

"We have to act. One of the mur­ders for in­stance ap­pears to be not your nor­mal gang, I am just mak­ing ref­er­ence to one, it might very well be do­mes­tic and Mr Ja­cobs spoke about it yes­ter­day (Fri­day) in terms of us tak­ing a look at those mat­ters that are not pure­ly crim­i­nal cen­tred but more emo­tion­al or what have you." He ex­plained that with each mur­der they had to de­ter­mine the cause and ex­am­ine the trends.

"We have a surge and the pub­lic should not be pan­ick­ing, it is not new, it is not a new do­main that we are in." He re­it­er­at­ed that one of their pri­or­i­ties was to en­sure peo­ple un­der­stood what it meant to be ar­rest­ed and im­pris­oned. "The prison must be a place that says it is a place not to come, a place to avoid. It is not a place where you have the free­dom to do things that im­pact so­ci­ety like what you were talk­ing about, alarm and those things." He again as­sured the pop­u­la­tion that the po­lice were work­ing on strate­gies to deal with the crime sit­u­a­tion.