Ot­to Car­ring­ton

A botched home in­va­sion at the home of a Char­lieville busi­ness­man yes­ter­day morn­ing has left one ban­dit dead and an­oth­er wound­ed.

The two men have not yet been iden­ti­fied. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, the men en­tered the busi­ness­man’s home around 4.30 am, trig­ger­ing an alarm. The busi­ness­man, a li­censed firearm hold­er, opened fire on the in­trud­ers.

One ban­dit died at the scene, and the oth­er, though wound­ed, man­aged to flee.

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed, who vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly to­day, em­pha­sised the need to push back against crim­i­nal el­e­ments in cen­tral Trinidad. He stat­ed that it was time for busi­ness own­ers and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to have eas­i­er ac­cess to le­gal firearms.

“I am pro-firearm. I have writ­ten over ten ar­ti­cles call­ing on busi­ness own­ers to take ac­tion. Once you are a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, we need to make the process sim­ple and easy for you to get your firearm user’s li­cence (FUL). I think that once you pass the cri­te­ria, it should be done eas­i­ly. I don’t un­der­stand why this process is so lengthy. It feels like a process where you think it might nev­er hap­pen. It’s like play­ing the lot­to; you don’t know if you will win or get a FUL. It shouldn’t be like that,” he said.

The may­or warned that if the crime sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues, T&T might see civ­il un­rest.

“We have the worst crime rate un­der this Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, yet you con­tin­ue to have faith in him to make changes. I don’t know who is mad—maybe the Prime Min­is­ter is go­ing mad in this coun­try. Change needs to hap­pen now be­cause this crime rate could lead to a civ­il up­ris­ing,” he added.

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly al­so com­ment­ed on the sit­u­a­tion, stat­ing, “With­out ap­pear­ing over­ly po­lit­i­cal, the time is now for swift and de­ci­sive ac­tion. The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies with those in au­thor­i­ty—all po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and politi­cians.

Po­lice are con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter.