Trinidad Tobago police were appealing for public assistance as they probe the shooting deaths of four people, including a three-year boy, gunned down in Diego Martin, west of Trinidad, as they were returning from a wedding on Sunday.
“If there is CCTV footage we will use it, witnesses will be interviewed, thorough investigations are underway, and once again I am appealing to anyone who has information that can lead to the capture and arrest of these murderers, we need you to come forward,” said acting Police Commissioner, McDonald Jacob.
He urged persons to put aside their “erroneous rhetoric about not being able to trust the police” and help solve the shootings of 27-year-old Chelsea Julien, her boyfriend Akeil Keron Gloster, their 22-year-old friend Marcus “Markie” Noel, 31-year-old Nicholas “Calke Boss” Owen, his girlfriend Khadija Vilbara and their three-year-old son Nizam.
Police said they were ambushed by gunmen as they drove in a vehicle with Jacob urging eyewitnesses not to “sit on information that can help not only a family, but all of us, to heal from this attack that affects everyone.
“If we want light to prevail, then we must do what is right, when you see something, please say something to the police,” he added, offering condolences to the victim’s families and providing counselling from the police’s Victim and Witness Support Unit.
“I do not want to just offer condolences and counselling from our Victim and Witness Support Unit, I strongly wish to offer timely justice for those who were slain,” he added.
CCTV footage of the shooting, which was subsequently shared on social media, showed the gunmen, who are suspected to have followed the vehicle in which those were killed, shooting as they were overtaking the car causing it to veer left off the road and crash into a wall.
Julien, Gloster and Noel died at the scene, while residents took Owen, Vilbara and their son to the St James Medical Facility for treatment , where the toddler was pronounced dead on arrival.
In 2007, Gloster with several others were charged with the kidnapping and murder of former Xtra Foods chief executive Vindra Naipaul-Coolman.
But the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) opted to discontinue the prosecution of Gloster and some of the others were eventually freed at the conclusion of their trial in 2016. However, two other persons are still facing a retrial.
So far this year, 487 people have been murdered.