A Belmont teenager, trying to earn money to purchase books and uniforms in anticipation of the upcoming school term, died after gunmen opened fire on a group of men along Serraneau Road, Belmont, during the mid-morning yesterday.
Zion Roberts, 14, a Form Two student of the Success Laventille Secondary School, was pronounced dead at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital shortly afterwards.
A 24-year-old man, who was also injured during the incident, remained hospitalised in a stable condition yesterday, after being treated for a wound to the right hand.
The two were part of a group of people sitting outside the D&D Mini Mart on Serraneau Road around 10 am, when a silver car drove up and stopped, and three armed men emerged and began shooting.
As the two victims ran off and a third ran back into his house, the gunmen got into the waiting car and fled.
This was the third fatal shooting to have taken place at that location between November 2024 and yesterday, with a total of five people dead.
In the first shooting in November 2024, three men were shot as they drove along Serreneau Road.
Residents reported hearing gunshots followed by a car crash around 11.25 pm on November 14, 2024, and emerged to find Josiah John and Kadeem Andrews, both 22, alive but suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.
Arjenal Pong, 28, of Upper St Francois Valley Road, was found dead in the driver’s seat.
A fourth man was killed days later, during the nightly wake for the three victims.
He was identified as Tyreke Birch, 24.
Yesterday, a young man who was wounded during the incident fought back tears as he said Roberts was an innocent youth.
“He used to just look for a lil hustle,” he said.
He said the second victim was also an “innocent one.”
His eyes welled up as he added, “Is only innocent people they killing.”
Although D&D Mini Mart remained open after the shooting, residents in close proximity said they would not be venturing out after dark now.
A young woman, who said she was still struggling to digest the deaths of months ago, lamented, “It is too much loss and too much pain. I fed up of funerals.”
Asked if this was as a result of gangs fighting for turf and control, she said, “Nobody knows what they fighting for. They just seem to want everybody here dead.”
Gazing off in the distance as he kept a wary eye open for vehicles along the road, a male resident said businesses in the area were feeling the backlash as he claimed, “Things slow, we cyar function. People fraid to come out.”
Feeling the loss acutely, as he revealed one of his relatives had been killed last year and yesterday’s shooting had brought it all back to the fore, he insisted, “This is not gang elated. We dunno who they came for. He was an innocent youth man.”
A 40-year-old Venezuelan woman who lives close by, said she was “Not good,” as she surveyed the damage to her silver wagon which had been parked on the road.
Revealing she had been renting in the area for the past six years, the woman, who works as a cleaner, begged for assistance from neighbours to change a flat tyre.
She stood off to the side as the men peeled back the garbage bags stuck over the shattered back-windscreen and side windows, showering glass on the road.
Admitting she had been scared when the gunshots rang out, she said she was uncertain if she will be moving just yet, as she said, “The people here are good to me.”
