An­na-Lisa Paul

An on­go­ing fam­i­ly dis­pute over a 16-acre par­cel of land at O’Con­nor Street, Blan­chisseuse, is be­ing blamed for the killing of Carv­er Evan­ge­list yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, rel­a­tives be­lieve his death could have been avoid­ed if the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had act­ed on the more than 50 re­ports of death threats that he had lodged at the Blan­chisseuse Po­lice Sta­tion over the past two years.

Evan­ge­list, 50, was shot in the back of the head by a gun­man around 7.10 am on April 22, as he sat un­der a sapodil­la tree high­er up his street.

One rel­a­tive cried yes­ter­day, “I called the po­lice and it took them 25 min­utes to reach. If I was dri­ving, I would have reached the sta­tion in two min­utes, and run­ning, in five. But it take them 25 min­utes to come. If he had any chance of sur­viv­ing, they make sure he dead.”

The land dis­pute has al­ready claimed the lives of two of Carv­er’s sons in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary 2021 re­spec­tive­ly.

One man said, “We don’t have no guns and we don’t want to arm our­selves as we done get warn­ing that the po­lice will come for us, but they forc­ing us to do it now to stay alive.”

An el­der­ly woman who de­clined to give her name said, “We are like sit­ting ducks just wait­ing to be killed.”

This photo shows the area where Carver Evangelist was killed by an unknown gunman at O’Connor Street, Blanchisseuse, yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Numb and still reel­ing in shock over Evan­ge­list’s death, a male rel­a­tive ex­pressed re­gret as he said, “I saw him sit­ting out by the road ear­ly and I felt like I should have tell him to go in­side be­cause he know they look­ing to kill him, but I didn’t.”

Asked if he felt he had failed to save Evan­ge­list, the man ad­mit­ted, “I feel like I failed him.”

Asked if the fam­i­ly was look­ing to leave the area as they were not safe and con­tin­ued to be tar­get­ed, an­oth­er man said, “I want them to move out of the coun­try be­cause there is nowhere in this coun­try that is safe that they can’t get to you.”

Evan­ge­list’s son Sher­win Ma­haraj, 31, was killed on Feb­ru­ary 17, 2021, as he took a soft drink to a rel­a­tive near his house.

The for­mer life­guard was am­bushed in the same man­ner as his fa­ther and shot in the back of the head near an aban­doned house on the street.

Ma­haraj’s broth­er Mitchell Evan­ge­list, 31, was killed along with Nigel Dedi­er, 51, on Jan­u­ary 26 as they worked on a con­struc­tion site along the Blan­chisseuse Main Road.