Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Sur­vivors of a shoot­ing at­tack that led to the mur­ders of two men on La Re­treat Road, Ari­ma, are fear­ful that the killers can re­turn at any time and at­tack them.

Po­lice said Ter­rence Romero, 59, and a 63-year-old man iden­ti­fied on­ly as “Pa” were lim­ing at the home of friends on La Re­treat Road at around 8.30 pm on Fri­day when three masked gun­men wear­ing what was de­scribed as “po­lice” uni­forms walked in­to the yard.

The gun­men shot at the group of peo­ple, killing Romero and Pa. A 38-year-old man was shot in his left leg dur­ing the at­tack.

Ari­ma po­lice were called and took the trio to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where Romero and Pa were de­clared dead.

The mur­ders are the lat­est in­ci­dents of blood­shed in what po­lice have de­scribed as an on­go­ing gang war on La Re­treat Road.

Less than a month ago, on Feb­ru­ary 23, Ani­cia James, 47, her broth­er Anslem James, 49, and her com­mon-law hus­band, Mitchell Fran­cis, 30, were gunned down dur­ing a home in­va­sion at their La Re­treat Ex­ten­sion, Heights of Gua­napo, home.

On Sep­tem­ber 21, 20, sib­lings Faith Pe­terkin, ten, Ar­i­an­na Pe­terkin, 14, Shane Pe­terkin, 17, and Tiffany Pe­terkin, 19, were gunned down as they slept at their Heights of Gua­napo home.

The mur­ders took place with­in a ten-minute walk of each oth­er.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day morn­ing, peo­ple at the prop­er­ty where the mur­ders hap­pened said they were about to be­gin cook­ing and lim­ing when the at­tack be­gan.

One woman who iden­ti­fied her­self as the sis­ter of the wound­ed sur­vivor said at least three chil­dren, all be­low the age of ten years old, were in the yard at the time of the shoot­ing.

Point­ing to two parked ve­hi­cles in the yard, she said the ve­hi­cles shield­ed the chil­dren from the bul­lets.

“If it weren’t for those two cars there, I don’t know what would have hap­pened. This hap­pened to­tal­ly with­out warn­ing, and we didn’t even know what led to this or who it was they (the gun­men) came for. These are two old­er guys.”

An­oth­er per­son at the home said Romero worked as a garbage man on the trucks at the near­by Gua­napo Land­fill and oc­ca­sion­al­ly vis­it­ed the rel­a­tives to give them food for pigs and cows they reared be­hind in the par­cel of land be­hind the prop­er­ty.

They said Pa has lived with the fam­i­ly for years as he worked help­ing with the live­stock in ex­change for a place to stay.

“I know him since I was a lit­tle boy grow­ing up here. None of us know his re­al name; we just know him as Pa, but he is ba­si­cal­ly a mem­ber of our fam­i­ly.”

When asked what they felt prompt­ed the at­tack, one man at the home said he was un­sure but felt that both men were not the in­tend­ed tar­gets of the killers, adding that he felt the gun­men could re­turn if they did not get their tar­get.

“The po­lice didn’t catch them (the killers). I don’t know if they suc­ceed­ed or what­ev­er in what their mis­sion was, but they (the killers) could come back. It’s a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty ...

“Ter­rence and Pa were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

One man who was in the yard at the time es­caped the at­tack­ers by jump­ing over a near­by gal­vanised fence, cut­ting him­self on his left leg in the process.

The man said de­spite the in­jury, he was hap­py to have sur­vived.

An­oth­er man said he did not have the time to process what was hap­pen­ing when the at­tack be­gan, as he on­ly re­mem­bered see­ing flash­es of gun­fire.

“I just ran; that’s all I could do, and that’s all I had time to do. When I saw those blue flash­es and flames from the guns, I re­alised that this wasn’t a joke.”

Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors said while the in­quiry was on­go­ing, they be­lieved Fri­day’s mur­ders were part of an on­go­ing strug­gle for con­trol of La Re­treat be­tween two gangs.

Ben­jamin: Po­lice do­ing their best

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin said the lat­est mur­ders in La Re­treat were sad­den­ing and ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the rel­a­tives of both men. He main­tained that the po­lice were do­ing their best to quell the killings.

He ad­mit­ted that there was an uptick in mur­ders in this par­tic­u­lar area, as he and the head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion North spoke on Fri­day to dis­cuss strate­gies and an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions for the area.

But de­spite the chal­lenges, Ben­jamin said he felt the po­lice ser­vice was do­ing “pret­ty well” in crime sup­pres­sion as they have con­tin­ued to main­tain an av­er­age of 1.1 mur­ders per day, com­pared to what was seen dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in 2020 and 2021 with pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions and a cur­few in place.

“We recog­nise that at this point in time, we have 82 mur­ders, com­pared to 112 last year, and still, if you look at it, we’re do­ing pret­ty well. We don’t have that (cur­few), and we are still main­tain­ing a 1.1 mur­der per day av­er­age. It means we are do­ing pret­ty well, but again, we are not sat­is­fied; we are still go­ing to con­tin­ue the fight.”

Re­spond­ing to the fact that the killers ap­peared to have used uni­forms re­sem­bling po­lice op­er­a­tional wear, Ben­jamin lament­ed that even with the change in uni­form pol­i­cy, which lim­it­ed blue Bat­tle Dress Uni­forms (BDUs) to spe­cial units, some crim­i­nals still did their best to im­per­son­ate of­fi­cers.

He urged the pub­lic to con­tact the po­lice if they sus­pect­ed that peo­ple con­fronting them were not le­git­i­mate po­lice of­fi­cers.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, act­ing ASP Op­er­a­tions Ish­mael Pitt of the North­ern Di­vi­sion ad­mit­ted that there have been chal­lenges in se­cur­ing La Re­treat but said giv­ing up was not an op­tion as of­fi­cers seek to strength­en their re­sponse.

“We have been chal­lenged, and that is with­out a doubt; we have al­so had some pock­ets of suc­cess, but we recog­nise there have been some gaps, and it is our in­ten­tion to fill those gaps.

“So we an­tic­i­pate mov­ing for­ward that there are brighter things to come, and for that rea­son, we look for­ward to a lev­el of suc­cess trans­ferred to safe­ty and suc­cess for the La Re­treat com­mu­ni­ty.”