An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion have vowed not to let Sun­day’s shoot­ing along Ari­api­ta Av­enue in Wood­brook off­set the 66 per cent de­cline in homi­cides they have man­aged to record be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 to present.

While they have de­scribed the killing of Je­lani George as un­for­tu­nate and trag­ic, of­fi­cials said they have worked hard to keep the mur­ders down.

A to­tal of 32 mur­ders were record­ed in Port-of-Spain up to Sun­day for 2025, com­pared to the 90-plus killings that were record­ed in 2024.

George, 28, of Hi­ron­delle Street in Mor­vant, was shot mul­ti­ple times around 8.50 pm, as he was seat­ed in a sil­ver Nis­san Cre­ta which had been parked be­tween Fitt and Mur­ray Streets along Ari­api­ta Av­enue. He died on the spot af­ter two gun­men opened fire on the car he was in.

Eye­wit­ness­es claimed a car stopped, and the shoot­ers emerged and am­bushed George, be­fore they es­caped in their wait­ing ve­hi­cle.

The shoot­ing sent cus­tomers scam­per­ing, with many aban­don­ing plans to pur­chase food or lime.

Po­lice of­fi­cials yes­ter­day said they had not re­ceived any re­ports that oth­er per­sons had been in­jured dur­ing the in­ci­dent, de­spite so­cial me­dia claims that two per­sons had sus­tained in­juries.

George’s killing pushed the mur­der toll to 349 for the year, com­pared to 589 for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Snr Supt of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Ray­mond Thom at­trib­uted the re­duc­tion in the num­ber of mur­ders to “strate­gies im­ple­ment­ed over the pe­ri­od which iden­ti­fied the main play­ers.”

He ex­plained that of­fi­cers had been go­ing hard at gang lead­ers, gang mem­bers and their as­so­ciates.

Thom claimed that while sev­er­al of these per­sons had been ar­rest­ed un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, the po­lice had al­so in­tro­duced oth­er mea­sures in a bid to re­duce the op­por­tu­ni­ty for il­le­gal gun ac­tiv­i­ty.

One such mea­sure was a change in the traf­fic flow near the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, along with a check­point for ve­hi­cles en­ter­ing and ex­it­ing the area.

Thom said they had been re­ceiv­ing sup­port from sev­er­al units, in­clud­ing the In­ves­ti­ga­tions and Op­er­a­tions Unit (IOU), the Port-of-Spain Task Force (POSTF), the Port-of-Spain Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (POS CID), the Port-of-Spain City Po­lice, the Cap­i­tal City Pa­trol Unit (CCPU), and the In­ter Agency Task Force (IATF).

He praised the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts of all per­son­nel, which he said in­clud­ed in­creased out­reach ef­forts with youths across the di­vi­sion—a strat­e­gy he strong­ly be­lieved had al­so re­sult­ed in a marked de­cline in wound­ings and shoot­ings.

Asked if the po­lice were an­tic­i­pat­ing any sort of reprisal shoot­ings fol­low­ing George’s killing, Thom said, “We are pre­pared to treat with it if that does in fact hap­pen, but we want to fin­ish off the year nice and qui­et.”