Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville @guardian.co.tt

The com­mon-law-wife of a mur­dered Diego Mar­tin man says while she is still dis­traught af­ter his death, she is grate­ful their four-year-old son, who was al­so shot, sur­vived the at­tack.

Po­lice said Shaquille Williams, 29, was sit­ting out­side his Gilkes Street, La Puer­ta home at 6.40 pm when he was con­front­ed by two gun­men who shot him in the left side of his hip and mid­sec­tion. Williams ran away from his at­tack­ers through a near­by yard but was cor­nered by the killers, who shot him again, killing him.

Williams’ son Amir was shot in the left leg and tak­en to the St James In­fir­mary, where he was treat­ed then trans­ferred to an­oth­er health fa­cil­i­ty where he re­mained as of yes­ter­day.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors vis­it­ed the scene and found sev­en spent 9 mm shells, a pair of gloves and a ski mask.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing his body yes­ter­day, Williams’ com­mon-law wife Shirette Mar­cano said she was hold­ing their son when the shoot­ing be­gan.

“It could have hap­pened dif­fer­ent­ly. It could be worse, it could be two bod­ies I com­ing to view to­day,” she said.

“I wish I got shot in­stead of him (my son) be­cause he was sit­ting down on top of me when it hap­pened.

“It just so hap­pened that I went out­side at that par­tic­u­lar time. I didn’t in­tend to come out, if I didn’t come out­side, he (Amir) would have been up un­der his fa­ther and it would have been both of them who died pos­si­bly.”

Mar­cano said Amir was shot near a main artery in his left leg and was sta­ble but un­der con­stant su­per­vi­sion to en­sure the artery was not dam­aged.

She said she felt numb in the af­ter­math of the at­tack but al­so felt con­flict­ed emo­tion­al­ly, as she briefly vis­it­ed the cen­tre be­fore re­turn­ing to the hos­pi­tal to stay with her son.

“I don’t know how to feel. I’m feel­ing hurt, an­gry, I feel­ing pained, de­pressed, help­less. All kind of thing I feel­ing. I don’t even know how to ex­plain it but it’s too much. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, my mind is just on him (Shaquille),” she said.

Mar­cano said Williams helped his broth­er with work as a me­chan­ic and would some­times pick av­o­ca­dos to sell in or­der to make ends meet.

She said while she was not sure for cer­tain why Williams was tar­get­ed and mur­dered, she ad­mit­ted he knew peo­ple in­volved in crim­i­nal lifestyles but pulled away from them with the birth of his youngest son two months ago.”

She added that Williams had plans of mov­ing the fam­i­ly to Eng­land and re­cent­ly or­gan­ised pass­ports in the hope of pro­vid­ing a bet­ter life out­side of T&T.

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion I are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.