KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Pop­u­lar maxi-taxi dri­ver and self-pro­claimed ho­mo­sex­u­al Ken­nty Mitchell was gunned down out­side his Ste Madeleine home on Fri­day night.

Mitchell, 47, was host­ing a par­ty that neigh­bours say had been a fix­ture every Fri­day for more than a year. While res­i­dents could not con­firm if the mur­der was linked to these events, they de­scribed the chaot­ic scene that erupt­ed af­ter the fa­tal shoot­ing.

Eye­wit­ness­es re­count­ed see­ing ve­hi­cles lin­ing the street, as was cus­tom­ary on Fri­day nights, with Mitchell greet­ing guests as they ar­rived. How­ev­er, the rev­el­ry turned in­to hor­ror when, as Mitchell ap­proached one ve­hi­cle to greet its oc­cu­pants, a gun­man opened fire. He was struck mul­ti­ple times be­fore the shoot­er sped off.

Guests who heard the gun­shots rushed out­side and fled the scene.

Po­lice are yet to de­ter­mine a mo­tive for the killing. Ste Madeleine of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a re­port of a shoot­ing at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11.40 pm but by the time they ar­rived just five min­utes lat­er, the street was de­sert­ed, save for Mitchell’s life­less body ly­ing near his maxi-taxi. In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered sev­er­al spent bul­let cas­ings.

A dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer ex­am­ined the body and or­dered its re­moval to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James. In­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion Three and the Crime Scene Unit processed the scene but had no sus­pects.

At Mitchell’s res­i­dence yes­ter­day, neigh­bours said his sis­ter was not at home. Blood­stains could still be seen at the spot where he was fa­tal­ly shot.

Mitchell had com­plained about per­sis­tent ha­rass­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion and the alien­ation he faced as an open­ly gay man in T&T. He de­scribed be­ing jeered by the pub­lic and tar­get­ed by law en­force­ment, and said he had once con­sid­ered seek­ing asy­lum abroad.

In 2010, he was award­ed near­ly $200,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for wrong­ful ar­rest and false im­pris­on­ment. He al­so claimed to have been wrong­ful­ly tick­et­ed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions.