The on-again off-again gang war between Block 8 and Beverly Hills, Laventille, claimed another life on Sunday after some months of relative calm in the area.
The latest victim was 32-year-old Emmanuel “Iron” Pauline, who was shot while washing his girlfriend’s car on Sunday. Pauline, his girlfriend Sunshine Sobers said yesterday, was a labourer who loved his two-year-old son. Sobers said at the time of the shooting, around 5.25 pm, there were children playing nearby.
“Friday had an incident with a shooting up there where a man collect three shots. He is recovering at the hospital. The area where they shooting from is on a hill and the shooters could see straight down inside Beverly Hills, so is not to say is somebody who walked up to him and shot him,” Sobers said.
“He was washing the car and the shot came, then others came after that. I think he got the first shot because I think that is what alarmed everybody that they were shooting. The children had to run. My ten-year-old child was with him. I had to run in somebody else’s building,” she added.
She urged the gang members to stop the warring but says all appeals go to nought, as at best they “cool it down” for a while only to start up again.
“It have no way I think this is going to stop,” Sobers, a corporal in the T&T Regiment, said.
“Police are a waste of time. They just come in the area, they drive through and they drive back. We don’t have a police post. They don’t have any respect for police either because they shooting back at the police and all. Is soldiers alone that they respect. You see when the soldiers intervene is a different thing. The place calms down.”
Pauline died at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital while being treated after he was taken there by Sobers.
Eyewitnesses said gunmen from neighbouring Block 8 opened fire indiscriminately at Beverly Hills.
In an unrelated killing, meanwhile, police believe the decomposing body of a man found in Diego Martin on Sunday is that of Devon Harewood. Police said they were not 100 per cent sure, however, as the body was in an advanced stage of decomposition. (JL)