Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The head of the To­ba­go Po­lice Di­vi­sion, ACP Col­lis Hazel, says gun vi­o­lence is be­com­ing a con­cern on the is­land.

He made the com­ment hours be­fore 23-year-old Brad Smith was shot and wound­ed at his home in Sig­nal Hill. He re­mains hos­pi­talised.

Po­lice told Guardian Me­dia that a rel­a­tive found Smith bleed­ing from gun­shot wounds out­side his home, af­ter shots were fired near his house around mid­night on Mon­day.

The gun­man es­caped from the scene on foot along Luke Road.

To­ba­go’s Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment, Di­vi­sion­al Task Force, and the Joint Pa­trol In­tel­li­gence Unit processed the scene and re­cov­ered three spent shells. In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to this mat­ter are on­go­ing.

Hours be­fore Smith was shot, Hazel spoke with Guardian Me­dia about the in­crease in gun vi­o­lence in To­ba­go.

While he boast­ed of an in­crease in the num­ber of guns re­cov­ered (24 in 2023 com­pared to 19 in 2022), he lament­ed that this is a cause for con­cern.

He said, “Firearms take lives, and there­fore re­mov­ing any firearm from the streets plays a very im­por­tant role in crime fight­ing and safe­ty ini­tia­tives.”

He added, “By the num­bers, it speaks to the idea that there are more firearms in To­ba­go, and this is why we want to make a spe­cial ap­peal to per­sons with knowl­edge of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion with­in their pos­ses­sion or hid­den any­where to reach out to the po­lice.”