sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Gun­men opened fire near a gas sta­tion at King’s Wharf, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day night, killing two men and in­jur­ing an­oth­er in what po­lice be­lieve to be a drug-re­lat­ed hit.

Fish­er­man Ker­ry Per­rot, aka Mamoo, 30, of King’s Wharf, and Joshua Co­dring­ton, 27, of San Fer­nan­do, died af­ter be­ing shot mul­ti­ple times while stand­ing near Maraj Tyre Shop at the Wharf around 8.45 pm.

A third man, Si­mon De Vi­gnes, 26, a sales­man of Hu­bert Rance Street, who was stand­ing close by, was hit by a bul­let in the ab­domen dur­ing the gun­fire.

Wit­ness­es told po­lice that a car head­ing north pulled along­side the men and loud gun­shots rang out.

The dri­ver of the ve­hi­cle then drove off.

Des Vi­gnes was rushed to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he re­ceived med­ical treat­ment for an in­jury on the left side of his stom­ach.

Both Per­rot and Co­dring­ton died with­in min­utes of the shoot­ing. Their bod­ies were viewed by Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Bachan, who or­dered them re­moved to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Mor­tu­ary. Au­top­sies are sched­uled to be done of the de­ceased at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, to­day.

Po­lice re­cov­ered 39 spent cas­ings fired from a 9mm cal­i­bre, 10 ap­par­ent pro­jec­tiles and one live 9mm round at the scene of the shoot­ing. Two ve­hi­cles parked close by—a black Toy­ota Field­er Wag­on and a yel­low Kia Rio—were al­so dam­aged by bul­let hits.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve the hit was linked to the mur­der of Ricky Wor­rell, who was shot on Fri­day night at King’s Wharf.

Wor­rell lived in Mara­bel­la. His nude body was seen float­ing in the Gulf of Paria at around 4 am on Sat­ur­day with gun­shot wounds to the chest and back. His pick­up van was parked near­by. Wor­rell, al­so called Flay Guard, was a fish ven­dor at the wharf.

A wit­ness, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, told po­lice that the men who fired up­on Wor­rell came from the di­rec­tion of the sea. No ar­rests have yet been made in any of the killings.

These lat­est mur­ders have brought the 2022 mur­der toll to 575.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion on the mur­ders can con­tact CrimeStop­pers at 800-TIPS.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist: SoE
still not the way to go

Con­tact­ed last night as the record mur­der toll con­tin­ued to surge to 600, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said an analy­sis of crime trends must be done be­fore crime pre­ven­tion so­lu­tions are rolled out.

Dr Seep­er­sad said while there were calls for state of emer­gency from some quar­ters, he still did not think it was nec­es­sary, adding such an act would al­so have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences on the econ­o­my at a time when peo­ple are al­ready suf­fer­ing.

“A state of emer­gency will not solve the prob­lem. It is an act of des­per­a­tion that puts a Band-Aid on and it will cause more harm than good. It’s not a so­lu­tion at this time,” he con­tend­ed.

Asked whether the T&T De­fence Force could al­so be bet­ter utilised to help in the crime fight, Dr Seep­er­sad said sol­diers may be able to do sur­veil­lance and joint pa­trols but based on the cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion of the law, there was very lit­tle else they could do.

“If the TTPS wants to utilise mil­i­tary of­fi­cers to in­crease ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide sur­veil­lance that might be good, but the law doesn’t cater for of­fi­cers of the Reg­i­ment do­ing polic­ing du­ties,” he ex­plained.

Asked what can be done to get bet­ter re­sults in the crime fight, Dr Seep­er­sad said: “One of the things we have to start to do is analyse so­cial net­works. Re­searchers can start to look at con­nec­tions. For ex­am­ple, gang mur­ders and in­ter-gang ri­val­ry. Is there any sys­tem­at­ic rea­son that links these mur­ders? I am talk­ing about whether places, times, cir­cum­stances, ac­tors, or caus­es are com­mon. Look for the com­mon­al­i­ties and then deal with them by of­fer­ing tar­get­ed so­lu­tions.”

He said when look­ing for faster so­lu­tions to crime, the prox­i­mate caus­es of crime should be as­sessed.

“Prox­i­mate caus­es are the spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances that pre­cip­i­tate acts of vi­o­lence, for ex­am­ple, re­tal­i­a­tion by gangs,” he said.

Un­der the Chica­go PURE vi­o­lence mod­el, Dr Seep­er­sad said me­di­a­tors were put in­to crime hotspots and this proved to be very ef­fec­tive.

“They have their ears on the ground and they pick up when things hap­pen. When a prob­lem aris­es, these me­di­a­tors step in and quell the con­flict. They talk peo­ple down be­fore they shoot up the place. We have me­di­a­tors through Project Build­ing Block but they have on­ly just start­ed and we do not have enough,” he added.

He said be­tween 2014 to 201,7 a sim­i­lar project was done, which re­sult­ed in a 40 per cent de­cline in mur­ders, wound­ings and shoot­ings in com­mu­ni­ties like Beetham, Sea Lots and Laven­tille.

How­ev­er, he called for pub­lic ser­vice mes­sages to be rolled out to de­vel­op trust and rap­port with the po­lice.

“Let the pub­lic be the eyes and ears of the po­lice. Right now, peo­ple keep to them­selves,” Dr Seep­er­sad added.

“Even if the Com­mis­sion­er goes on va­ca­tion, the TTPS doesn’t stop work­ing and there are pro­to­cols that are in place to en­sure that things run smooth­ly. Di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders will con­tin­ue to work.”

He said once a larg­er analy­sis of crime da­ta is done, spe­cif­ic tar­get­ed crime so­lu­tions will yield bet­ter re­sults in the crime fight.