KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A 21-year-old Point Fortin man was hos­pi­talised with mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds af­ter an ear­ly-morn­ing shoot­ing in Guapo.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Zachary Adams, of War­den Road, Point Fortin, was in­side a home on Lawrence Street, Sal­ick Trace, when an un­known man al­leged­ly forced his way in around 5.30 am on Thurs­day.

A 20-year-old man, who was sleep­ing in the same home, told po­lice he was awak­ened by dogs bark­ing and no­ticed the front door shak­ing.

He then saw a man dressed in dark cloth­ing and a hood­ie stand­ing at the door­way, be­fore hear­ing sev­er­al gun­shots.

Adams, who was seat­ed near the front door, re­port­ed­ly cried out in pain and clutched his chest as blood oozed from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds.

The gun­man ran off be­fore po­lice ar­rived. Adams was tak­en to the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal, where he un­der­went emer­gency surgery and was ward­ed in sta­ble con­di­tion.

A pre­lim­i­nary med­ical re­port re­vealed Adams suf­fered two gun­shot wounds to the ab­domen, one to the left low­er back, one to the left hip, and one to the right thigh, which had both en­try and ex­it wounds.

Po­lice, led by act­ing Cpl George, mem­bers of the Guapo Po­lice Sta­tion and the South West­ern Di­vi­sion Pa­trol Unit vis­it­ed the scene short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered three 9mm spent shells, each marked by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, and searched the area for CCTV footage.

The South West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force con­duct­ed checks of the sur­round­ing area in an at­tempt to cap­ture the gun­man, but were un­suc­cess­ful.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors in­ter­viewed res­i­dents in the area and gath­ered in­for­ma­tion as part of an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In an un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dent lat­er, A 29-year-old gas sta­tion at­ten­dant nar­row­ly es­caped in­jury af­ter an at­tempt­ed shoot­ing in Sal­ick Trace, Guapo.

Po­lice re­port­ed that the vic­tim, who is from the area, told po­lice he was walk­ing along a track on Fras­er Street around 6.20 pm when he was ap­proached by two men he knew as res­i­dents.

Ac­cord­ing to the vic­tim, af­ter a brief con­ver­sa­tion, one of the men shout­ed, “Shoot him.”

He then saw one of the men lift his jer­sey, re­veal­ing a bulge that caused him to fear for his life.

As he ran away, he re­port­ed­ly heard sev­er­al loud ex­plo­sions, be­lieved to be gun­shots, but he was not hit.

The men ran away be­fore the po­lice ar­rived. Of­fi­cers from the Point Fortin CID and the pa­trol unit scoured the area, in­ter­viewed sev­er­al res­i­dents and searched for CCTV footage to as­sist the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors, in­clud­ing PC Ram­dass and PC Teles­ford, processed the scene for spent shells, DNA, or oth­er ev­i­dence, but noth­ing was re­cov­ered.

Po­lice con­firmed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing and urged any­one with in­for­ma­tion about the in­ci­dent to come for­ward.