Carisa Lee
The country’s murder count last night crossed the 500 mark with the killings of two people on Lady Chancellor Hill on Friday evening.
According to reports at approximately 6:45 pm police received a call about a white Nissan Sylphy parked at the bottom of the Hill, with two dead male occupants inside.
The occupants were a 15-year-old boy and his father.
They suffered several gunshot wounds to the head and were found slumped in the front seats of the vehicle.
The bodies were discovered by joggers who opened the vehicle after they noticed the engine running and the glass frosted. The killings pushed the murder toll to 501.
The murder count stood at 497 at the start of yesterday but rose with the killing of 37-year-old Winston Richards of Palo Seco who was gunned down at his home yesterday morning.
According to reports police, around 6:50 am Richards was outside his Beach Road home when three men emerged from bushes nearby and fired several shots at him. He ran to the back of his home where he collapsed and died.
That took the count up to 498.
It rose to 499, when police classified a decomposed body found in Cedar Hill, Arouca on Wednesday, as a murder.
He was identified as Joey Melville.
Police believe that he may have been killed around midnight on Wednesday as residents reportedly heard gunshots in the area. The officers found Melville’s body under a tree.
In the last five years, Trinidad and Tobago’s murder count passed 500 just once with 516 murders in 2018. The only other time it crossed the 500 marks was in 2008 when 550 persons were murdered.