Prisons officer Andell Primus failed to heed the many warnings from his relatives not to venture into Laventille.
However, on Friday evening their worst fears were realised when Primus, 27, was shot three times in the head by gunmen, thrown out of his vehicle, and left for dead at Red Hill, Morvant, which is within close proximity to Laventille.
Primus, a father of a two-month-old baby girl, died while being taken to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital.
Yesterday, Primus’s eldest sister Safiya Primus, 32, of Bhagaloo Street, Enterprise, admitted that family members had repeatedly warned her brother, a prisons officer for the past 30 months, to stay away from Laventille after he was repeatedly threatened there, but he had failed to listen.
“Fellas told him people looking for him and want him dead. It was not only for him alone. It was for a couple of prisons officers.” Safiya said Primus did not listen to their advice and continued to live as normal.
“At times he lived in fear. He came here and told us that he made reports at the prison.”
As a precautionary measure, Safiya said, Primus was transferred from the Maximum Security Prison in Arouca to the Youth Training Facility a few months ago.
“We also heard that he was supposed to be placed in a safe house,” Safiya said, as tears welled up in her eyes.
Though Primus rented an apartment in Longdenville, he slept at his parents’ home in Enterprise occasionally.
She said she could only assume that Primus associated with “bad influence or company. In those kinds of areas who would you be with? Who it have there? He was always at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was truly a good person.” Safiya questioned why Primus would visit Red Hill, which was a few kilometres from his baby’s mother’s home in Morvant. “My brother was brutally gunned down. My parents taking it really hard because Andell was their only son.”