KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Hours af­ter videos of a man walk­ing through Cy­press Hills, Union Hall, with a firearm went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia, he was shot dead dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with po­lice yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The shoot­ing left some res­i­dents ex­press­ing re­lief, claim­ing De­mani “Man­ny” Lewis was as­so­ci­at­ed with a group they al­leged had been ter­ror­is­ing the San Fer­nan­do com­mu­ni­ty.

Po­lice re­port­ed that of­fi­cers act­ed on in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to bur­glary and firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences when they went to Silk Cot­ton Dri­ve, where they en­coun­tered Lewis at his home. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, Lewis point­ed a firearm at of­fi­cers, who re­spond­ed by dis­charg­ing their weapons. Lewis was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead.

Con­cern had ear­li­er spread through the Cy­press Hills com­mu­ni­ty af­ter a res­i­dent cir­cu­lat­ed two videos show­ing Lewis walk­ing along a road­way hold­ing what ap­peared to be a firearm while smok­ing a cig­a­rette and ges­tur­ing to­ward some­one off cam­era. An­oth­er video showed him out­side a build­ing along Mont­gomery Cir­cu­lar, where he dis­charged a shot and called out to some­one iden­ti­fied on­ly as “Gary.”

Fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, a res­i­dent con­firmed re­ports that a po­lice of­fi­cer who lives in the com­mu­ni­ty had re­cent­ly been threat­ened af­ter thieves broke in­to his apart­ment and stole sev­er­al items. Res­i­dents al­so claimed that in­di­vid­u­als were lat­er seen at­tempt­ing to gain ac­cess to the of­fi­cer’s apart­ment on an­oth­er oc­ca­sion while loi­ter­ing out­side the premis­es.

A neigh­bour said res­i­dents recog­nised the man from the videos and had be­come in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned about a se­ries of break-ins and thefts with­in the area. The res­i­dent said many peo­ple were more fear­ful of hav­ing their homes bur­glarised than of the gun­fire that oc­ca­sion­al­ly erupt­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“He lived here. Peo­ple were more scared of their apart­ments be­ing bro­ken in­to, things be­ing stolen and tak­en out of them, their hard-earned earn­ings. That is what they were more scared of. This area is known to have a lot of youths with guns, but at the end of the day, it is what it is,” the res­i­dent said.

Res­i­dents re­called sev­er­al bur­glar­ies and rob­beries with­in the com­mu­ni­ty and al­leged that a group of young men had been op­er­at­ing in the area for more than a year. They claimed sev­er­al apart­ments had been bro­ken in­to and that cop­per had been re­cent­ly stolen from an un­fin­ished build­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to res­i­dents, re­ports were made to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, but they said no ac­tion was tak­en. One res­i­dent al­leged that a mem­ber of the group threat­ened to have men rape her, while an­oth­er claimed they were threat­ened with vi­o­lence. Res­i­dents fur­ther al­leged that as re­cent­ly as last week­end, men were seen on the bal­cony of an apart­ment around 4 am fir­ing shots in­to the air.

Sev­er­al teams of in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­mained at the scene yes­ter­day, in­ter­view­ing rel­a­tives and col­lect­ing ev­i­dence as in­quiries con­tin­ued in­to the fa­tal shoot­ing.