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Friday, July 11, 2025

Sangre Grande crime wave

Gang warfare driving up murders, robberies in district

by

838 days ago
20230325

A re­cent up­surge in shoot­ings, armed rob­beries and killings in Damarie Hill, San­gre Grande, has forced res­i­dents of the area in­to a self-im­posed lock­down.

In 15 months, San­gre Grande has been rocked by 22 mur­ders. A com­pi­la­tion of da­ta showed that be­tween Jan­u­ary 2022 and this month there were 20 gun-re­lat­ed deaths, one po­lice-in­volved killing and the fa­tal stab­bing of a res­i­dent in the bustling dis­trict (See box). Of the 20 peo­ple who were gunned down in the last four months, four were killed ei­ther close to or on Blake Av­enue.

The most trag­ic was the mur­der of six-year-old Kylie Mal­oney in Jan­u­ary. Mal­oney was ly­ing in a bed when she was shot in her chest by men dressed in cam­ou­flage cloth­ing. Three of Mal­oney’s rel­a­tives suf­fered gun­shot wounds. The oth­er vic­tims were Ben­ji Rus­sell, David Hinds and Stephon Sa­roops­ingh.

Two weeks ago, Sa­roops­ingh, 20, the fa­ther of a three-month-old ba­by, was shot mul­ti­ple times a short dis­tance from where Mal­oney was killed. He was lim­ing with a group of friends in front of a fruit stall on Blake Av­enue when two armed men emerged from near­by bush­es and opened fire on the group.

Last Sep­tem­ber, two chil­dren ages six and three were among sev­en peo­ple shot and in­jured at a wake on Blake Av­enue.

In ad­di­tion to mur­ders, there has been a se­ries of armed rob­beries in the area which is now re­gard­ed as a crime hotspot,.r

But Blake Av­enue is not the on­ly com­mu­ni­ty in San­gre Grande where there has been an in­crease in vi­o­lent crimes. In the last year, there have been mur­ders at Pic­ton Road Ex­ten­sion, Gilkes Street, But­ter­cup Av­enue, Madoos­ingh Dri­ve and Rod­ney Lane, to name a few.

In Jan­u­ary, Sher­wyn Bernard was mur­dered at his Ve­ga De Oropouche busi­ness­place.

Sev­er­al months ear­li­er, in May of 2022, the killing of Jim­my Thomas sparked out­rage and con­dem­na­tion on so­cial me­dia. Thomas was al­leged­ly gunned down on the cor­ner of Boodoo Cir­cu­lar Road by two men dur­ing an at­tempt to steal his gold chain.

The dis­cov­ery of the bul­let-rid­dled bod­ies of Jer­marc Quashie, Ter­rence Nixon and Skette Sanchez in a car on the To­co Main Road last Jan­u­ary sent shock­waves through­out the dis­trict.

The largest town in the north­east­ern re­gion, San­gre Grande, which means “big blood”, has seen a pro­lif­er­a­tion of gun vi­o­lence, mur­ders and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties as crim­i­nal gangs wage war against one an­oth­er.

There is al­so a high rate of pover­ty and un­em­ploy­ment in the dis­trict which cov­ers 898 square kilo­me­tres and has the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of squat­ters in the coun­try.

Armed rob­bery
in broad day­light

Damarie Hill res­i­dents, who spoke to the Sun­day Guardian on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, ad­mit­ted they are liv­ing in fear as the crime sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened in re­cent weeks.

A woman who lives on Blake Av­enue Ex­ten­sion said the com­mu­ni­ty is be­ing ter­rorised by a group of men, two of whom are well known to the po­lice and linked to the drug world.

“They have men rob­bing peo­ple in broad day­light in the back here...steal­ing peo­ple’s build­ing ma­te­ri­als. Imag­ine this is what we reached to,” she said.

Just be­fore Christ­mas, gang­sters, armed with guns and cut­lass­es, held up a man in his home and cart­ed away sev­er­al of his be­long­ings.

“They emp­tied his fridge. They stole his build­ing ma­te­ri­als and house­hold equip­ment,” the res­i­dent said.

Not long af­ter, the crim­i­nals in­vad­ed the home of a woman at Farm Road, Tu­rure.

“They al­so went in­to the squat­ting set­tle­ment in Bois Bande...and beat up a woman and take away her weed whack­er.”

Blake Av­enue is a stone’s throw from Bois Bande, a squat­ter set­tle­ment.

• Con­tin­ues on page 7

• From page 6

“Right now, they are war­ring and there will be ca­su­al­ties. What we want is peace. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that is not the case,” a res­i­dent not­ed.

An el­der­ly res­i­dent, who de­scribed the killings as a to­tal break­down of law and or­der, com­ment­ed: “It’s law­less­ness at the high­est or­der. Peo­ple are scared for their lives. That is the long and short of it.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent said some lead­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty have been try­ing to reach out to the gang mem­bers.

“You can­not live long with that crim­i­nal lifestyle. The Bible says if you live by the sword you will die by the sword but we have not been hav­ing any sig­nif­i­cant re­sults as yet,” he said.

“All they see is what is in front of them. How­ev­er, we are not giv­ing up. We live here. We can­not get up and run. It’s a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion for us be­cause there is hard­ly any­one in the com­mu­ni­ty who has not been touched by them. It’s af­fect­ing all of us.”

San­gre Grande North West coun­cil­lor Nass­er Ho­sein said he no­ticed an in­crease in mur­ders at Damarie Hill and that se­ri­ous crimes were be­ing com­mit­ted at Bois Bande Set­tle­ment.

“It’s a small group of peo­ple who have been giv­ing cer­tain ar­eas a bad name. A lot of se­ri­ous crimes are not re­port­ed to the po­lice due to fear,” he said.

Ho­sein said the po­lice are try­ing their best but he is call­ing for more boots on the ground.

Se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Ryan Khan blamed the sit­u­a­tion on an up­surge in gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

“That first mur­der with the child (re­fer­ring to Mal­oney) oc­curred as a re­sult of that. Yes, there are gangs and some­times some of the mur­ders will be a re­sult of re­tal­i­a­tion from one gang to the next,” he said.

Khan said he met with some of the vil­lagers to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion two weeks ago but days lat­er Sa­roops­ingh was mur­dered.

“We con­tin­ue to put things in place for the long and short term,” Khan said.

He said while the di­vi­sion has been work­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty, oth­er forms of in­ter­ven­tion are need­ed.

“We need to reach teenagers as young as 14 years old to change their lifestyles,” he said.

Teenagers go­ing astray

There are con­cerns about the large num­ber of teenagers in the dis­trict who sel­dom at­tend class­es, have no parental guid­ance and fall in­to the wrong crowd.

“They are un­su­per­vised. They have a lot of free time on their hands. That was part of the com­plaints we had at the meet­ing,” Khan re­vealed.

A large squat­ting dis­trict lo­cat­ed at the back of Damarie Hill has been at­tract­ing strangers, he said. Pover­ty is al­so ev­i­dent.

“When new peo­ple come to the area, we don’t know who they are. So, we have to go in­to those ar­eas and try to in­ter­vene in some way.”

Ac­cord­ing to Khan, al­though gangs mem­bers have been rob­bing and dis­tress­ing res­i­dents, in­for­ma­tion is be­ing with­held from the po­lice.

“So we have a trust is­sue. We have to re­build the trust in the com­mu­ni­ty with them. It will take time for us to re­al­ly get the re­sults we want,” he ad­mit­ted.

Khan said the po­lice need all on board in the fight against gangs and oth­er crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

Ef­forts to get com­ments from­To­co/San­gre Grande MP Roger Mon­roe on the sit­u­a­tion with crime in his con­stituen­cy were un­suc­cess­ful. Calls to his cell phone went unan­swered.


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