Ezekiel Paria had dreams of be­com­ing a pi­lot but a stray bul­let elim­i­nat­ed that bright light on Thurs­day af­ter­noon, as he rode his bi­cy­cle in the neigh­bour­hood.

The top-per­form­ing stu­dent, who had been look­ing for­ward to sit­ting the 2024 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am on March 21, had been work­ing dili­gent­ly to achieve his goals.

Paria, 12, was a Stan­dard Five pupil of East­ern Boys’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School at George Street, Port-of-Spain. He was yes­ter­day de­scribed by a fel­low stu­dent as, “a re­al nice per­son who was al­ways help­ing oth­ers”.

Po­lice had ini­tial­ly giv­en Paria’s age as 11 but his moth­er said he was 12 and al­so that he car­ried his fa­ther’s fam­i­ly name.

Paria, who lived at Laven­tille Road, near Mapp Trace, had been hop­ing to pass for Fa­ti­ma Col­lege.

He was killed at 4.50 pm on Thurs­day, af­ter gun­men opened fire on a res­i­dent who had been in a car trav­el­ling along Laven­tille Road.

While the in­tend­ed tar­get es­caped with mi­nor in­juries, Paria, who had been stand­ing at the side of the road when the shoot­ing be­gan, was shot in the head.

An au­top­sy con­duct­ed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC), St James, yes­ter­day, con­firmed he died as a re­sult of cranio-cere­bral in­juries due to a gun­shot in­jury to the head.

Speak­ing af­ter get­ting the au­top­sy re­sult, Paria’s griev­ing moth­er, Melis­sa Hug­gins, told re­porters he had been work­ing dili­gent­ly to get to his first choice school.

“He was on track to reach there,” she said, adding St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege was his sec­ond choice.

Strug­gling to piece to­geth­er sen­tences when asked to de­scribe her son, Hug­gins whis­pered, “Eze was a lov­ing, kind child.”

She added, “He loved foot­ball and rid­ing bike. He was very out­doorsy.”

Asked about his ca­reer choic­es, she smiled briefly as she re­called, “He al­ways want­ed to be a pi­lot. He was an A-class stu­dent...nev­er had a prob­lem in school.”

Say­ing she was at work at the time of the shoot­ing, Hug­gins said she re­ceived a call from one of her daugh­ters in­form­ing her that Paria had been shot and had sub­se­quent­ly died at hos­pi­tal.

Com­ing from a blend­ed fam­i­ly with sev­er­al sib­lings, Hug­gins, who is a sin­gle moth­er, said Paria nev­er lacked for any­thing.

She said, “Any­thing he want­ed, he would get.”

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted she had warned and begged her chil­dren to stay off the roads in the neigh­bour­hood.

“The area was hot these days. The au­thor­i­ties aren’t do­ing any­thing about it,” she lament­ed.

Hug­gins ac­knowl­edged the sit­u­a­tion be­tween war­ring gangs in the Bel­mont area would be reignit­ed as a re­sult of the sit­u­a­tion, which had now turned in­to “a hit for hit.”

She said Paria’s broth­ers and sis­ters re­mained in shock over the killing and were strug­gling to cope with the sud­den loss.

Hug­gins told re­porters that of­fers for coun­selling had been ex­tend­ed to the fam­i­ly by of­fi­cials from both the East­ern Boys’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, as well as the East­ern Girls’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, which Paria’s sis­ter at­tends.

TTPS: Two sus­pects
still in cus­tody

Less than 10 min­utes af­ter the fa­tal shoot­ing at Laven­tille Road, law­men in­ter­cept­ed one of the get­away cars with two sus­pects in­side and al­leged­ly re­cov­ered a firearm be­lieved to have been used in the in­ci­dent.

The sus­pects re­mained in cus­tody at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion up to last night as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ued.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Paria’s fam­i­ly.

She said, “This sense­less crime cuts deep as a young life was lost, and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow, de­vel­op and max­imise his po­ten­tial was tak­en away.”

She moved to re­as­sure the fam­i­ly that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was com­mit­ted to bring­ing the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice.

She praised the quick re­sponse by of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Task Force and the Port-of-Spain Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit, who re­spond­ed swift­ly to re­ports of the shoot­ing on Thurs­day and were able to ap­pre­hend the two sus­pects.

Fol­low­ing a search of the sus­pects’ car, of­fi­cers al­leged­ly found a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na, a pis­tol and am­mu­ni­tion.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said, “We re­main un­daunt­ed and re­lent­less in our com­mit­ment to tack­ling gun vi­o­lence and pro­tect­ing the lives of all cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly our most vul­ner­a­ble.

“I al­so com­mend the swift ac­tion and vig­i­lance of the of­fi­cers in­volved in the in­ter­cep­tion and even­tu­al ap­pre­hen­sion of the sus­pects, and once again, I urge any­one with in­for­ma­tion about this trag­ic in­ci­dent to come for­ward and as­sist the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, so jus­tice can be served in this mat­ter.”

Of­fi­cers from the Com­mu­ni­ty Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Sec­tion (COPS), as well as staff from the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit (VW­SU) vis­it­ed the East­ern Boys’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School yes­ter­day to of­fer con­do­lences on be­half of the CoP and her ex­ec­u­tive.

Justin Ro­driguez, of the VW­SU, al­so con­duct­ed a brief ses­sion to help the pupils un­der­stand their emo­tions and feel­ings about the loss of their school­mate. He al­so con­duct­ed oth­er ses­sions with staff and pupils aimed at giv­ing them a sense of hope to cope dur­ing their time of loss.

NPTA: Na­tion must
come to­geth­er

Adding their voic­es to those call­ing for jus­tice over Paria’s death, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions Inc (NPTA) said the killing was a “heart-wrench­ing re­minder of the es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence in our com­mu­ni­ties”.

Pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art said the dev­as­tat­ing event, cou­pled with the re­cent in­dis­crim­i­nate shoot­ing in front of a pri­ma­ry school in Port-of-Spain on Tues­day, had ex­posed chil­dren to unimag­in­able trau­ma.

In a re­lease, the NPTA un­der­scored what they claimed was a deeply con­cern­ing trend.

Stew­art said, “These in­ci­dents are not iso­lat­ed but in­dica­tive of a broad­er so­ci­etal cri­sis that de­mands im­me­di­ate and de­ci­sive ac­tion.

“The fre­quen­cy of such vi­o­lence is alarm­ing but par­tic­u­lar­ly in Port-of-Spain and its en­vi­rons. It is con­cern­ing and can­not con­tin­ue un­abat­ed.”

The NPTA said it will be sched­ul­ing a meet­ing with the ex­ec­u­tive team of the Port-of-Spain and En­vi­rons Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict soon, in or­der to sup­port and am­pli­fy their ef­forts to com­bat the wave of vi­o­lence.

“We firm­ly be­lieve that it is on­ly through unit­ed ac­tion that we can ad­dress the root caus­es of this epi­dem­ic,” Stew­art said.

Call­ing on the CoP and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to di­a­logue with the NPTA, Stew­art ad­vised, “It is es­sen­tial that the per­spec­tives of par­ents and guardians are heard in this con­ver­sa­tion. Our chil­dren’s safe­ty must be the cor­ner­stone of our com­mu­ni­ty’s foun­da­tion, and we are com­mit­ted to ad­vo­cat­ing for mea­sures that will pro­tect our fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.”

The NPTA ar­gued that these vi­o­lent acts against chil­dren should not be viewed as sep­a­rate in­ci­dents but part of a larg­er, more com­plex prob­lem that re­quires col­lec­tive at­ten­tion and ac­tion.

Stew­art urged, “We must come to­geth­er as a na­tion to ad­dress these is­sues head-on, with the wel­fare of our chil­dren as our guid­ing prin­ci­ple.”

He added, “Among the mea­sures we ad­vo­cate for is the im­po­si­tion of stricter penal­ties for the pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal firearms. It is clear that the cur­rent de­ter­rents are in­suf­fi­cient. We need laws that re­flect the sever­i­ty of these crimes and their im­pact on our so­ci­ety, es­pe­cial­ly our most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers. The time for ac­tion is now. We can­not al­low the lives of our chil­dren to be threat­ened by sense­less vi­o­lence.”