Less than one week af­ter a Mor­vant man was gunned down in front of a Laven­tille fu­ner­al home, an­oth­er man, this time an em­ploy­ee at the same fu­ner­al home, was gunned down near the busi­ness on Mon­day evening.

Po­lice said 39-year-old Clyde John­son Jr was stand­ing with co-work­ers out­side his work­place, Simp­son’s Memo­r­i­al Ser­vices Ltd, on the East­ern Main Road, Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille, at around 6.24 pm, when a sil­ver Toy­ota Yaris pulled up near him.

Two gun­men got out of the car and shot John­son sev­er­al times.

John­son tried to run away but fell and one of the gun­men walked up to him and shot him again as he lay on the ground. Both gun­men then got back in the car and es­caped.

A dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer vis­it­ed the scene and de­clared John­son dead.

His body was stored at his work­place be­fore be­ing tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, where it was swabbed pend­ing a post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion.

Last Thurs­day, 25-year-old Em­manuel Parks was gunned down while stand­ing out­side an au­to de­tail­ing shop a few feet away from the fu­ner­al home.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, John­son’s rel­a­tives said they did not be­lieve he had any­thing to do with the mur­der of Parks.

Asked if he ever com­plained of be­ing threat­ened, one rel­a­tive said John­son nev­er put him­self in a po­si­tion where he would be con­front­ed by crim­i­nals.

“He didn’t used to be in any­thing so there was no rea­son for any­one to threat­en him. He doesn’t lime and thing so. It was just work and home. He didn’t go any par­ties or any­thing,” the rel­a­tive said.

One of John­son’s friends said while ru­mours were cir­cu­lat­ing that Parks was “put in place” or set up by John­son, he al­so doubt­ed these ru­mours, not­ing that both men did not know each oth­er.

He al­so ques­tioned how quick­ly it would have tak­en for Parks’ killers to ar­rive at the scene af­ter be­ing told of his lo­ca­tion.

“How could they get there that fast af­ter re­ceiv­ing a call? They would have to be su­per­men to be mov­ing that fast. I don’t be­lieve that, but peo­ple may have heard that sto­ry cir­cu­lat­ing and be­lieved it.”

Re­fer­ring to Parks’ mur­der last week, John­son’s moth­er, Eu­ge­na John­son, said crim­i­nals were un­pre­dictable in how and where they would strike and lament­ed how dan­ger­ous the coun­try had be­come.

She said while John­son was from Mor­vant, he stayed with his girl­friend, who lives in Laven­tille, to be clos­er to work. She said she of­ten warned him about the dan­gers of lim­ing out­side his work­place af­ter dark.

“I used to tell him I don’t like how you used to be com­ing out by Simp­son’s and lim­ing, sit­ting out by the road. Peo­ple just get­ting killed for noth­ing. You can’t do any­thing at all to stay safe again,” the emo­tion­al moth­er said.

“In your house there are home in­va­sions, where they com­ing and rob­bing you and killing you in your house.

“We, the peo­ple, have to put down the guns to stop the crime.”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Simp­son’s Memo­r­i­al Ser­vices yes­ter­day and spoke with man­ag­ing di­rec­tor David Simp­son, who said he was deeply con­cerned over both Parks and John­son’s mur­ders.

Simp­son said while he hoped there would be an end to on­go­ing blood­shed in the neigh­bour­hood, he felt he had be­come numb to the re­al­i­ties of crime in the area.

He called on young men to take stock of their lives and re­alise their po­ten­tial to rise above crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“I’m look­ing at the body on the ground and lis­ten­ing the re­counts of what took place and it’s a sad sit­u­a­tion. We re­cent­ly had an­oth­er mur­der just next door and what­ev­er the rea­son was, it could be a reprisal, it could be a whole dif­fer­ent is­sue, but an­oth­er young, con­tribut­ing cit­i­zen is now dead,” Simp­son said.

“Be­ing from the Laven­tille dis­trict and be­ing in the fu­ner­al in­dus­try, we have be­come numb, we have be­come im­mune. At one point, it (mur­der) used to be a sur­prise, now you just want to know who it is.

“Gun­shots don’t scare you any­more, the po­lice putting up cau­tion tape and all these things no longer af­fects you.”

Simp­son said he had al­ready left work for the evening when he got the call that John­son was killed.

He said de­spite be­ing de­sen­si­tised to the fre­quen­cy of vi­o­lent crimes, John­son’s co-work­ers were deeply pained by his mur­der.

“It’s a sad sit­u­a­tion what is tak­ing place in Trinidad and To­ba­go as far as crime is con­cerned, but when are we as a peo­ple go­ing to re­alise it’s we killing us? We are en­sur­ing that a cer­tain cat­e­go­ry of peo­ple is non-ex­is­tent if we keep this up,” he said.

John­son worked as a dri­ver for the hearse and re­moval vans, but was al­so known as a skilled crafts­man who would place elab­o­rate de­signs on coffins for fu­ner­als.

He was ex­pect­ed to be­gin work on a batch of coffins that was ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered yes­ter­day.