Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has called on To­bag­o­ni­ans to ral­ly to­geth­er and not give up in the fight against crime. The Chief Sec­re­tary said he was sad­dened by the mur­der of Shel­lon Wal­ters-Joseph and the re­cent mass shoot­ing in Spey­side, which left six peo­ple in­jured.

Wal­ters-Joseph, 32, was found over a precipice at Saw Mill Trace, Mt St George, last Sat­ur­day, hours be­fore po­lice re­spond­ed to the shoot­ing at Spey­side.

Po­lice be­lieved the two in­ci­dents were linked as the ve­hi­cle in­volved in the shoot­ing be­longed to a woman from Mt Marie, Scar­bor­ough. To­ba­go’s mur­der count now stands at sev­en for 2024. Speak­ing yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the com­mis­sion­ing of the Pa­tience Hill Recre­ation­al Grounds lights, Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go could not sur­ren­der in the on­go­ing fight against crime.

“It’s al­ways un­ac­cept­able for me, and every sin­gle mur­der we have on the is­land is one too much. It’s a fight that we have to re­tain our so­ci­ety as it were and to keep out the neg­a­tive in­flu­ences,” he said.

He thanked To­bag­o­ni­ans for work­ing with the po­lice to en­sure the per­pe­tra­tors were held. “Thank­ful­ly, no one died (in last week­end’s shoot­ing).  Imag­ine be­ing in your vil­lage, com­fort­able, and some­one pass­ing and emp­ty­ing shots.

“Our un­der­stand­ing is that the tar­get is one in­di­vid­ual, and you can see how many got im­pact. The po­lice are fol­low­ing the leads that they have that the com­mu­ni­ty came for­ward with, and I must thank the com­mu­ni­ty for not stay­ing qui­et but step­ping for­ward and pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion for the po­lice to fol­low.

“We need our com­mu­ni­ties to ral­ly and stand up in times like these against crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” Au­gus­tine said.