Jason Manswell ended his relationship with a woman from Laventille several months ago after he began receiving death threats from another of her lovers.
However, he was so in love with the woman that he decided to rekindle their love affair. Three days after the couple decided to reunite, however, Manswell was shot dead by two gunmen who stormed the woman’s home at Quarry Street, Laventille.
According to police reports, shortly after midnight on Monday, Manswell, a mason from Edinburgh 500, Chaguanas, was sleeping with the unidentified woman when two armed intruders entered the house and shot him several times as he lay in the bed.
His companion, who escaped unscathed, watched helplessly as the gunmen shot Manswell then ran away. Manswell, 29, died shortly afterwards.
Speaking at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, before his autopsy yesterday, Manswell’s mother, Jacintha Simmons, blamed her son’s love interest for his death.
“The girl set up my son. She wicked and bad. You know you have all them man there, why you encouraging my son there?” she asked.
Simmons claimed her son broke off the relationship after he received death threats and he only informed her on Friday he and the woman were getting back together.
“He say he and the girl sit down and talk and they decide to make back up and get married because she stopping the wild life,” Simmons told the T&T Guardian.
“I didn’t tell him anything because I done cuss him about that girl ’cause I never wanted him down there because she is a bad girl with all kind of man,” she added.
Lamenting she had failed to stop her son from returning to the woman, Simmons denied her son was involved in gang activity as she described him as quiet, respectful and helpful.
“It happen in Quarry Street and they go say is gang thing but he was never no gangster. He like woman, like most young boys, but this one set him up,” Simmons said as she shook her head in disbelief.
Contacted yesterday, detectives of the Region One Homicide Bureau, who are investigating Manswell’s murder, said they would investigate Simmons’ claims. They said they had already questioned his girlfriend and were in the process of doing further investigations.
In an unrelated incident, Tylon Dyer was gunned down at his Princes Town home.
Police believe Dyer, 18, a welder of Moruga Road, Petit Cafe, was killed by gunmen searching for his elder brother, Victor Marcano, who was not home at the time.
Police said Marcano and two other men were released from prison last month after a murder charge against them was dismissed at the Princes Town Magistrates Court.
Reports say Dyer and a relative were working in a shed in front his home around 1.40 pm when a silver Nissan Tiida pulled up.
Two men with bandanas over their faces came out and one of them shot Dyer three times in the back. As he fell to the ground, a gunman shot him several more times before running back to the car. The suspects then escaped.
In an interview yesterday, the victim’s mother, Margaret, said: “He did not deserve to die like this. He died on the spot where he was doing his work. Hewas just 18 years old and always worked hard with his father.
“He never used to interfere with anybody. I believe he got shot because his brother who was on a murder charge was freed.”
Screaming as undertakers drove off with his body, Margaret said she knew trouble was brewing when Marcano asked her to come and live near her.
“My son did not know anything about that murder because he was a little boy when it happened and now he came and paid a price for it,” she said.
Residents who gathered near the scene said there was a rumour for the past month that someone would have been killed but no one thought it would be Dyer. They said he was a friendly person who never got into trouble.
These latest killings took the toll for the year to 206.