An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The coun­try’s mur­der count has in­creased fol­low­ing two sep­a­rate killings in Cunu­pia and Barataria yes­ter­day.

In the most re­cent in­ci­dent, Ke­ston Guer­ra was killed as he sat in his car at the cor­ner of Sec­ond Street and Third Av­enue, Barataria, around 8 am yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said Guer­ra, 33, of Sev­enth Av­enue, Mal­ick, Barataria, was am­bushed by armed men as he drove his car. He had been wait­ing to pro­ceed through the in­ter­sec­tion when the gun­men, who had been fol­low­ing him, pulled along­side his ve­hi­cle.

The sus­pects opened fire on Guer­ra whilst he was be­hind the steer­ing wheel, and lat­er emerged from their car to con­tin­ue shoot­ing at Guer­ra through the wind­screen of his green Nis­sa Ti­i­da, which had crashed in­to a lamp­post.

Guer­ra, who went by the alias Gor­lum, was em­ployed with the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and was re­port­ed­ly on his way to work when he was killed.

Po­lice said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 24 spent nine-mil­lime­tre shell cas­ings were re­cov­ered at the scene.

The in­ci­dent left mo­torists, as well as par­ents on their way to drop off their chil­dren at near­by schools, in shock—and al­so led to a traf­fic pile-up in the area, as two blocks were cor­doned off un­til Guer­ra’s body was re­moved around 11 am.

And just sev­er­al hours ear­li­er, around 1 am, Cunu­pia busi­ness­man Haqqani Ali was killed whilst se­cur­ing his rent­ed premis­es.

Po­lice said the 34-year-old, of Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James, was shot as he was lock­ing up El Grande Piscine Pool along Solomon Dri­ve, Chin Chin Road, Cunu­pia.

An em­ploy­ee told po­lice he heard two loud ex­plo­sions and up­on check­ing, found Ali ly­ing on his back. He was shot in the head by a masked gun­man who was seen run­ning away.

Ag CoP: Trends show
killings down

De­spite the con­tin­u­ing in­ci­dents, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin says crime-fight­ing mea­sures are yield­ing re­sults, as mur­ders are down by 33 per cent.

While Ben­jamin’s main fo­cus re­mains crime re­duc­tion, he ex­pressed con­cern about the con­tin­ued lack of re­gard for hu­man life, as he ac­knowl­edged the brazen killings.

Deny­ing there had been a spike in mur­ders since the 105-day State of Emer­gency (SoE) was lift­ed on April 13, Ben­jamin ad­mit­ted, “There are mur­ders tak­ing place. There is not a high num­ber though, tak­ing place. What you have seen was that there were three mur­ders tak­ing place with­in a 24-hour pe­ri­od, but that is not a spike.”

He reaf­firmed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) com­mit­ment to keep­ing the mur­der count down.

“This is the high­est per­cent­age we have man­aged to achieve in terms of keep­ing mur­ders down, com­pared to last year,” he said.

The mur­der count stood at 153 up to 4 pm yes­ter­day, com­pared to 228 in 2024 and 241 in 2023, for the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od.

With the sta­tis­tics show­ing T&T had been record­ing as many as 60 mur­ders per month in 2024, Ben­jamin said, “We are now down to 30 mur­ders or so per month.”

Buoyed by this “dras­tic de­cline,” Ben­jamin said, “For the month of May last year, we had 50 mur­ders...with 49 in 2023; and now, we have on­ly record­ed 22 mur­ders.”

This, he said, rep­re­sent­ed a 64 per cent de­cline in mur­ders month­ly com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

Not want­i­ng to “jinx” these pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments, the act­ing CoP said this was ev­i­dence the po­lice were man­ag­ing to achieve their man­date to slow this in a sig­nif­i­cant man­ner.

Ben­jamin com­mend­ed his of­fi­cers, “For the in­cre­men­tal dis­tance in the crime sta­tis­tics of last year and this year.

“We want to see a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders and while we are in front of our pro­jec­tions and where we are, we are not at ease.”

He added, “We are still not sat­is­fied but we are fight­ing, and we are ask­ing the cit­i­zens to part­ner with us, join us in this fight as we con­tin­ue to make in­roads in­to the crime sit­u­a­tion. We be­lieve with the pub­lic’s help, we can fight this thing and make T&T safe once again.”