An­na-Lisa Paul

Less than 24 hours af­ter Kiel Paul was killed while play­ing foot­ball in Va­len­cia on Sat­ur­day—his moth­er ad­mit­ted the fam­i­ly was no stranger to gun vi­o­lence.

Sarah Sub­ah told re­porters she was shot in the right leg in 2021 by armed men dur­ing an in­ci­dent. In ad­di­tion, her house was shot at by armed men in 2022. She said she was fi­nal­ly forced to close down her shop fol­low­ing a vi­o­lent rob­bery in Feb­ru­ary.

The moth­er of three cried for her first born yes­ter­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, de­scrib­ing the loss as a blow she will nev­er re­cov­er from.

She said, “To lose a child is not an easy thing, es­pe­cial­ly a child who was not dis­obe­di­ent or dis­re­spect­ful, so it hard to cope with that feel­ing right now.”

Paul, a Form Three Coryal Sec­ondary School stu­dent, had dreams of be­com­ing a solid­er.

“He was al­ways con­tent­ed with what lit­tle he had,” Sub­ah added.

Sub­ah, who was in bed when the gun­fire rang out, re­called jump­ing out of a deep sleep and ques­tion­ing where her son was.

From her home, Sub­ah could see her son’s body on the foot­ball field and she ran to him hop­ing he was alive. In­stead, she was on­ly able to cra­dle his life­less body.

Vexed by the out-of-con­trol crime, she ques­tioned what could be done to re­duce killings.

Mean­while, Kiel’s school­mates were in shock yes­ter­day. The prin­ci­pal, teach­ers and stu­dents held a prayer ses­sion for him.

Some of his close friends had to be con­soled by teach­ers and a guid­ance of­fi­cer spoke to the school pop­u­la­tion. He was a mem­ber of the school’s foot­ball team and de­sired to play for T&T.

An­oth­er vic­tim of the shoot­ing, Bri­an Ber­nette, 26, re­mained in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal late yes­ter­day.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

—With re­port­ing by Ralph Ban­warie