A Belmont woman believes her son’s outright refusal to join a gang may be what ultimately led to his death, as gang members continued to target him at every opportunity.
Police said Adundi Telemaque, 41, was gunned down in a track that connects Upper Belle Eau Road to St Barb’s Road in Belmont at 7 am on New Year’s Day.
He is believed to be the first murder victim of 2024.
Residents reported seeing three masked gunmen jumping over a wall and running through the track shortly after the gunshots were heard.
Investigators found 41 spent shells, including 5.56, 9mm and 40-calibre shells, at the scene.
Speaking with Guardian Media at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, yesterday, Telemaque’s mother Deborah Williams said when the gangsters did not get him to join the gang, they tried to extort him.
When this also failed, she said the criminals attacked him, which led to him being shot on two separate occasions over the past two years.
“The bad boys and them up by us, they wanted him to pick up the gun but he told them he not doing that, he’s a big old man who has two children,” she said.
“They told him that one day and they shot him days later on his hand. That time he drove himself to the station.
“They come back again behind him and said he had to pay $1,000 when he gets paid. He said he has two children and that his money was for that and building his house.”
Williams said the second shooting happened in August 2022, when Telemaque was shot in his hand and hip and drove himself to the Belmont Police Station again before being taken to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital. She said despite repeated warnings to him and advice for him to visit a relative in the US to get away from the constant threats to his life, Telemaque refused to be chased away and continued to live life as normal.
“I tell him to take some leave and go and meet his uncle out there. He said ‘Mammy I ain’t going nowhere’. He said up there he born and grow up, he wasn’t running from nobody. He was kind of stubborn, he wouldn’t back down.”
Williams said Telemaque was ambushed when he walked outside to dispose of garbage, by the gunmen who hid in a nearby yard and waited for him.
She said Telemaque was a labourer with the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA).
Commenting on recent remarks by Commissioner of Police Erla Harewood-Christopher over a five per cent decline in murders last year, Williams dismissed any claims of an improvement in the murder statistics, noting that any crime-fighting progress was not visible.
“That’s a waste of time. Nothing has dropped.
“If you go and make a report like we did, by the time you reach home in half an hour they can call my son and say, ‘Or you and your mother went in the station.’ You don’t see they putting us up to kill us? If I make a report that’s supposed to be confidential.”
Williams said her son’s murder was particularly heartbreaking, as it was the beginning of 2024 and recalled the good memories she shared with him and his children on Old Year’s Night as they lit fireworks and celebrated the new year.
–Shane Superville
