KEVON FELMINE
Se­nior Re­porter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A ca­su­al con­ver­sa­tion be­tween two cousins end­ed in tragedy in Pe­nal on Wednes­day night when a gun­man opened fire, killing both men.

The dou­ble homi­cide, which took place along De­ok­ie Street, claimed the lives of Ger­ard Fe­lix, 57, a wa­ter pump tech­ni­cian, and Mario De Leon, 45, own­er of Milling­ton Bar, Pe­nal. Both men lived just hous­es apart along De­ok­ie Street.

Fe­lix’s rel­a­tives be­lieve he was an in­no­cent vic­tim, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Fe­lix, a fa­ther of two, and De Leon were stand­ing in front of De Leon’s house at 7.10 pm when a man wear­ing a hood­ie ap­proached them. The gun­man fired mul­ti­ple shots at the cousins be­fore flee­ing the scene.

Pe­nal po­lice re­spond­ed to re­ports of the shoot­ing and learned that rel­a­tives had al­ready rushed Fe­lix to the Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty. When of­fi­cers ar­rived at the scene, they found De Leon ly­ing dead on the road­way, with mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds. A Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer ex­am­ined De Leon’s body and or­dered its re­moval to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James for an au­top­sy.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered 12 spent 9mm Luger shells from the scene.

Mean­while, when Siparia po­lice con­sta­bles Bridge­mo­han and Ma­haraj vis­it­ed the health fa­cil­i­ty, doc­tors in­formed them that Fe­lix had suc­cumbed to his in­juries. His body was al­so sent to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre for an au­top­sy.

At Fe­lix’s home yes­ter­day, fam­i­ly mem­bers were in shock. His niece, Sh­erniece Fe­lix, said the fam­i­ly was al­ready griev­ing the loss of their ma­tri­arch, who had died just hours ear­li­er. She re­vealed that Fe­lix had been shot at least four times.

Sh­erniece ex­plained that De Leon of­ten stopped by to chat with Fe­lix, as they lived near­by.

“Had Mario not called him out of his home to have what­ev­er dis­cus­sion or hang out, he would have been alive to­day,” she lament­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to her, a lone gun­man had fired the shots be­fore es­cap­ing. The street had been qui­et un­til the in­ci­dent, af­ter which res­i­dents be­gan gath­er­ing around the crime scene.

Sh­erniece de­scribed her un­cle as a friend­ly man with no en­e­mies, ex­press­ing dis­be­lief at his un­time­ly death. She sus­pect­ed that De Leon was the in­tend­ed tar­get, based on ru­mours that he had be­come in­volved with the wrong crowd af­ter be­ing de­port­ed from the Unit­ed States a few years ago.

“I can tell you, my un­cle was a re­al good and de­cent man. The most he would do was lime and drink with his friends. He was well-known in Pe­nal. Every­one knew him as the wa­ter pump guy. Peo­ple would come here fre­quent­ly to get their pumps re­paired.”

She added that their part of Pe­nal had been most­ly qui­et and free from se­ri­ous crime—un­til now. Al­though she had an­tic­i­pat­ed that crime might even­tu­al­ly reach their neigh­bour­hood, she said she nev­er ex­pect­ed it to ar­rive so vi­o­lent­ly at their doorstep.

Sh­erniece ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with the ris­ing crime in the coun­try, call­ing it a fail­ure. She stressed that her un­cle did not de­serve to die in such a way, as he was not in­volved in any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. She al­so ex­pressed her doubts about whether the po­lice would de­liv­er jus­tice, ex­plain­ing that the crime prob­lem stems from deep­er is­sues, in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic fac­tors. Fur­ther­more, she called on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress these root caus­es.