At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s, 71-year-old Vernon Carter was at outside his home in Maloney Gardens watching fireworks. Moments later he was fatally shot by a stray bullet which came from an illegal gun gangsters were using to fire into the air representing their way of ringing in the new year.
A few hours after Carter was killed Homicide Bureau officers in south Trinidad were probing the shooting death of ex-convict Sheflan Rampersad of Claxton Bay.
The deaths of Carter and Rampersad opened 2015 with a murder toll of two. And earlier in the night on Wednesday Sherwin Skeete, 40, of Punette Drive in Pinto, was also shot dead.
Police said Carter, who lived at Woodstar Avenue, Maloney, was standing outside his house with neighbours at the corner of Kingbird and Woodstar Avenue watching fireworks about five minutes into the new year when he was struck by a stray bullet.
In an interview at his house yesterday relatives said he was not a target of gunmen but was somehow shot. “He slumped to the ground and said he was getting a stroke. He had a recent bypass surgery but then we saw that he was bleeding,” one relative said.
Carter was taken to the Arima Health Facility where he died. “The doctors said they saw a bullet wound on the left side of his chest. He just said his prayers and came out to watch the fireworks,” the family member said.
The relative said Carter had recently bought a tablet to go on Facebook. Investigators said before Carter was shot police officers had responded to the area because certain residents were firing guns into the air during the new year celebration.
However, the shooting continued and officers of the Guard and Emergency Branch moved into the community. Law enforcement officers said there were two separate parties on the streets. They said the fetes merged causing a ruckus. Police said the party goers were blocking vehicles and creating havoc. The police dealt with the problem and left.
In the incident before (Wednesday night) Skeete and Simon Bravo, of the same area, were shot around 10 pm by gunmen
According to police, Skeete, Bravo and a group of men were liming on the roadway when a car drove up. A man wearing a hat came out of the car and opened fire on the group. Skeete and Bravo were taken to hospital. Skeete died. Bravo remains warded in critical condition.
Skeete, a barber and father of one, had been back in Trinidad for the past two years. Relatives did not wish to comment on his death at his Arima home yesterday.