Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

What be­gan as an af­ter­noon of com­mu­ni­ty foot­ball end­ed in tragedy when 32-year-old De­vanand Dwari­ka was shot and killed on Sun­day night af­ter al­leged­ly threat­en­ing spec­ta­tors with a gun.

Po­lice re­port­ed that Dwari­ka was seen flaunt­ing a re­volver and threat­en­ing res­i­dents at a small goal foot­ball game near the cor­ner of Gar­de­nia and Cro­ton Streets, Mal­abar, short­ly be­fore 10 pm. Res­i­dents said Dwari­ka left the area but re­turned short­ly af­ter, last seen lim­ing with two oth­ers.

Mo­ments lat­er, two gun­shots rang out. Lo­cals dis­cov­ered Dwari­ka bleed­ing on a near­by recre­ation ground. North­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice found him with a re­volver con­tain­ing three live rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, along with three spent shell cas­ings. A dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer de­clared him dead at the scene.

Of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit (SERU) re­cov­ered three spent 9mm cas­ings, be­lieved to be from the mur­der weapon. In­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau are con­tin­u­ing in­quiries.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Dwari­ka’s home on Ar­joon Street, Mal­abar, near where he was found dead, but neigh­bours said no one was home.

One res­i­dent on Cro­ton Street said she did not con­done Dwari­ka’s be­hav­iour but was sad­dened by his death. She re­called that he was friends with one of her sons and be­gan drink­ing heav­i­ly af­ter his girl­friend moved out with their four-year-old daugh­ter.

“He grad­u­al­ly be­came more de­pressed over time. I be­lieve his lat­est out­burst was a re­sult of his per­son­al prob­lems,” she said. “It’s a fam­i­ly house where he used to live, but his girl and him lived in the back. When they put him out, he came here cry­ing say­ing he had nowhere else to go. I left that af­ter­noon, and by the time I came back, he was dead. Be­fore I left, he kept say­ing he was frus­trat­ed … that he want­ed God to take him. He was hurt. He was a nice per­son when he wasn’t drink­ing.”

The woman said that, while sym­pa­thet­ic to Dwari­ka’s strug­gles, she would not have al­lowed him on her prop­er­ty had she known he had a gun. She al­so re­gret­ted leav­ing the area, be­liev­ing she might have been able to per­suade him to calm down or pre­vent the in­ci­dent.

Dwari­ka, who was orig­i­nal­ly from St He­le­na, was not per­ma­nent­ly em­ployed, sup­port­ing him­self through odd jobs or sell­ing items such as cell­phones.

An­oth­er res­i­dent near the recre­ation ground, how­ev­er, ex­pressed lit­tle sym­pa­thy. He re­called see­ing Dwari­ka’s be­hav­iour ear­li­er in the day.

“Whole day he was giv­ing trou­ble. When the foot­ball be­gan, some­body said he was bran­dish­ing a gun, and there were chil­dren around. Even­tu­al­ly the com­mo­tion died down when the po­lice were called, but ap­par­ent­ly he went and hid, wait­ing for the po­lice to leave be­fore com­ing back out. He was drink­ing and reck­less all day. His friends tried to take him home, but he came back out,” the man said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the tragedy, he said the in­ci­dent serves as a warn­ing to oth­ers.

“At the end of the day, he was look­ing for trou­ble all day. All death is sad, and to see a young per­son in a cof­fin is not a nice thing, but you can’t stop some­one from do­ing the wrong thing. A gun doesn’t make you pow­er­ful; it’s not just you who has a gun. The po­lice and oth­er bad boys have guns too,” he said.

Res­i­dents said the com­mu­ni­ty re­mains shak­en. Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors were seen can­vass­ing the area, gath­er­ing more in­for­ma­tion on Dwari­ka and the in­ci­dent.