Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Mor­vant res­i­dents say while they are not par­tic­u­lar­ly shak­en or fear­ful, they are an­tic­i­pat­ing more vi­o­lence af­ter three men were killed in sep­a­rate in­stances in dif­fer­ent parts of the com­mu­ni­ty on Tues­day.

In the lat­est in­ci­dent, the body of Clarence Thomp­son was dis­cov­ered in a bushy area be­hind his Crichlow Trace, Chi­napoo, home at around 11.45 am yes­ter­day. Res­i­dents in the area re­port­ed hear­ing gun­shots hours ear­li­er on Tues­day night.

At around the same time, kilo­me­tres away in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia,, po­lice were called to the area af­ter res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing gun­shots. They dis­cov­ered the body of 62-year-old Steve Grif­fith in a track.

Hours ear­li­er that morn­ing, 22-year-old Tyrell Hink­son was shot and killed in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia. Guardian Me­dia Ltd vis­it­ed Crichlow Trace, where vol­un­teers from the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team were di­rect­ing first re­spon­ders at­tached to the North East­ern Di­vi­sion to the area.

One res­i­dent said he re­called hear­ing the sound of gun­fire from two dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions at around 9 pm on Tues­day but did not know that some­one had been killed un­til im­ages of Thomp­son’s body were shared on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

The man said he was “ac­cus­tom” to hear­ing gun­shots in the neigh­bour­hood but felt that more mur­ders were like­ly as he re­flect­ed on the blood­shed in the area on Tues­day.

“The killings hap­pen­ing in a cir­cle, but what you could do? I’m sor­ry to hear that but what can you do?

“I per­son­al­ly don’t have any fear in those things. God is with me, I not walk­ing in that lifestyle, but if I am to get gun­shots I will get gun­shots.

“The killing now start... the way how things go­ing killings now start. But com­ing clos­er to Christ­mas and Car­ni­val, those youths want mon­ey so they ain’t re­al­ly busi­ness.” The man sug­gest­ed that the mur­ders stemmed from “frus­trat­ed” res­i­dents who lost their means of sup­port­ing them­selves with the loss of con­tracts from the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP).

“Men have no kind of in­come, no CEPEP, no Forestry, noth­ing... and the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple liv­ing around here, that’s the kind of work they were do­ing, so you’ll find the strain come down on peo­ple more.

“No work, no hus­tle, so every­body un­der the same strain. It had five (CEPEP) gangs for Laven­tille and Mor­vant dis­tricts, it have noth­ing so peo­ple do­ing any­thing for mon­ey. It’s pres­sure.”

Guardian Me­dia Ltd al­so vis­it­ed Cipri­ani Av­enue, Mor­vant, where Steve Grif­fith once lived.

Res­i­dents there said they al­so re­called hear­ing gun­shots on Tues­day night but did not know that Grif­fith had been killed un­til the fol­low­ing morn­ing af­ter read­ing me­dia re­ports on so­cial me­dia.

“That’s just how it is up here. We know him (Grif­fith) as the guy who used to lime with those young fel­las and thing, but that’s not al­ways a good thing.

“As an old­er per­son you have to know your place in a neigh­bour­hood.”

Point­ing to a bul­let hole in the glass pane of a small eatery in the neigh­bour­hood, the res­i­dent said many peo­ple pre­ferred to keep to them­selves, not­ing that they on­ly dis­cov­ered the bul­let hole when they woke up that morn­ing, im­ply­ing that it was due to the shoot­ing the night be­fore.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, in­ves­ti­ga­tors found three live rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion, four spent 5.56 shell cas­ings and four spent 9 mm shell cas­ings at the scene of Grif­fith’s mur­der.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, North East­ern Di­vi­sion head, Snr Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne, as­sured res­i­dents that the TTPS was tak­ing the mat­ter se­ri­ous­ly, not­ing there was a height­ened po­lice pres­ence and “op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ties” in the af­fect­ed ar­eas, with a spe­cif­ic fo­cus on pre­vent­ing fur­ther blood­shed.

“We are al­so en­gag­ing with res­i­dents and oth­er stake­hold­ers with­in the com­mu­ni­ty as we seek to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion that can as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

“I am ap­peal­ing to any­one who may have wit­nessed ei­ther in­ci­dent, may have in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing the move­ments of the vic­tims pri­or to the in­ci­dents, or may have any in­for­ma­tion that can as­sist in iden­ti­fy­ing the per­pe­tra­tors to come for­ward.”

Guy-Al­leyne stressed that in­for­ma­tion can make a big dif­fer­ence to the suc­cess of in­ves­ti­ga­tors try­ing to find the killers and bring clo­sure to the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies.She al­so urged res­i­dents not to en­gage in re­tal­ia­to­ry vi­o­lence.

“Any dis­putes or con­cerns should be brought to the at­ten­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice so that we can ad­dress same law­ful­ly.”

Guy-Al­leyne al­so not­ed that re­sources would be de­ployed to ad­dress vi­o­lent crime in Mor­vant, adding that all in­stances of vi­o­lence were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed to ver­i­fy whether or not they were re­lat­ed.