radhica.sookraj@guardian.co.tt
Villagers of Sixth Company, New Grant, hid in their homes as four gunmen opened fire outside a village parlour, shooting five residents about their bodies, including a 13-year-old student.
Victoria Cooper, a student of Christ College in Princes Town, suffered a bullet wound to the lower right leg, injuries to the right foot and an abrasion to the left shoulder after the gunmen began spraying the parlour with bullets around 8.10 pm on Saturday.
Hayden Grant, alias Preddy, was shot seven times about the body and remains warded in a serious condition at the San Fernando General Hospital.
Also injured in the gunfire was Calvin Patterson Gonzales, 57, aka Cartoon; Davion Noel, alias Ratty, age 29, of # 100 Sixth Company Circular New Grant and Rodney Cooper, 36, also of Sixth Company.
Investigators said around 8.10 pm, the victims were standing near a neighbourhood parlour when a silver wagon pulled up and four masked men jumped out. Without warning, they began firing on the group of villagers.
Victoria, who was waiting by the parlour for her elder sister Sharlene Cooper to return home from Princes Town, started to run when the gunshots started.
Rodney told police he also ran for his life when he heard the gunshots. He stumbled through bushes to his home nearby where he realised he was shot on one finger on each hand.
Saying the other villagers got worse injuries, Rodney said everything happened so fast and nobody was prepared for the hail of gunfire.
Meanwhile, a relative of Gonzales told police he had to play dead to escape. He said a bullet passed through the top of Gonzales’s head and he was also shot in the shoulder.
The relative said Gonzales had gone to the parlour to buy bread and eggs. His back had been turned when he heard the shots.
“He had to lie down and play like he was dead,” the relative said.
Meanwhile, Victoria’s mother Glenda Cooper said she was asleep when someone woke her up saying her daughter had been shot.
“When I got up, my daughter came down the hill and said she told me she get shoot. Her foot was bleeding. I stop to cry and I was traumatised. I put my trust in Jesus name. It look like she get shoot in a vein, it swell up and the foot break,” Glenda said.
She added: “Where she get shot, the blood start to spray like a pipeline burst. She say mammy the foot hurting and her daddy take her to the hospital. She never came back home and I just here waiting.”
Police believe the shooting was linked to a drug dealer from the area. Crime scene investigators retrieved 11 spent shells from the scene of the crime.
