An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter one of her sons was gunned down out­side his broth­er’s house in Laven­tille on Wednes­day, ex­ec­u­tive chair of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee (ESC), Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da, yes­ter­day ap­pealed for time be­fore she makes any pub­lic state­ments about the mur­der.

Kwe­si Wada­da, 42, of Gloster Lodge Road, Bel­mont, was shot sev­er­al times out­side his broth­er’s home at Rudolph Charles Link Road, Laven­tille at 3.20 pm. Wada­da was em­ployed with the Forestry Di­vi­sion in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

Po­lice said Wada­da was am­bushed by a gun­man as he sat in the dri­ver’s seat of his sil­ver Nis­san Wingroad. He was found slumped face down across the front pas­sen­ger seat.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 spent 9 mm shells, four live 9 mm rounds, a pro­jec­tile and two frag­ments were col­lect­ed at the scene.

Af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing her son’s body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, the ESC head asked for time and space for the griev­ing fam­i­ly.

In an in­ter­view with an­oth­er dai­ly news­pa­per in Au­gust 2024, Uzoma-Wada­da ex­pressed con­cern that the root caus­es of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty were not be­ing ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed.

“If you are liv­ing in a so­ci­ety and 80 to 90 per cent of that par­tic­u­lar pop­u­la­tion are the ones who are im­pris­oned in a so­ci­ety, some­thing is wrong. Not on­ly with the peo­ple who are com­mit­ting the thing, but it is what is hap­pen­ing in the so­ci­ety that is cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment that fa­cil­i­tates that kind of be­hav­iour and in­ter­ac­tion be­tween peo­ple,” she had said then.

Uzoma-Wada­da said the vi­o­lence man­i­fest­ing among Afro-Trinida­di­ans was not the on­ly vi­o­lence that ex­ist­ed, but was the most vis­i­ble and added, “Gang vi­o­lence is not lim­it­ed to T&T.”