Senior Reporter
sascha.wilson@guardian.co.tt
Confined to a wheelchair, the elderly mother of 37-year-old Michael Williams could only watch in horror as her son ran for his life from a relentless gunman on Saturday.
A terrified Patricia Williams sat in her living room listening to gunshots, hoping her son would survive. Instead, minutes later, she was told he had been killed.
Police said that around 5.30 pm, Williams was liming with a neighbour outside his Ixora Lane home when a white Toyota Aqua pulled up. A gunman, wearing a camouflage face mask and hooded jacket, exited the vehicle and immediately opened fire.
Williams fled through the back of the property, running along a track and into nearby streets in a desperate attempt to escape. However, the gunman pursued him, firing repeatedly.
Relatives said Williams fell and broke his leg while trying to get away. The gunman eventually caught up with him and shot him in the head before fleeing in the waiting vehicle.
Williams’ body was later found in a shallow drain in a bushy area off Cedar Drive.
His heartbroken 73-year-old mother recalled seeing two masked men chasing her son.
“He was outside sitting down and they ran behind him because they shoot him in Cedar Drive. My neighbour was here sitting down with him and he got frightened and ran from them and buss he head. He run inside and I sit down here. I get frightened,” she said.
The mother said she had no idea why anyone would want to kill her son. After suffering a stroke several years ago and losing the ability to walk, she said Williams became her primary caregiver.
“He real nice. He used to help me. When I get the first stroke, he used to help me. It real sad. He used to help me how I sick,” she lamented.
Disturbed by the country’s crime situation, she said she has now lost three of her four children to violence.
In 2009, her daughter, Alicia Kizzy McKenzie, a state witness in a murder case, was gunned down, while another son, Avalon McKenzie, was killed more than two decades ago.
Lamenting the level of violence in Trinidad and Tobago, she said, “I does be frighten for everything happening. Too much gun violence. The place sick.”
She has one surviving daughter, who is expected to arrive from abroad today.
While police believe the killing may have been drug-related, Williams’ common-law wife of five years, Faith Chewitt, denied he was involved in any criminal activity.
“He only goes out if I say let us go out. From work he comes home,” she said.
Williams worked with the San Fernando City Corporation.
Chewitt noted that Sunday was Father’s Day and Williams had planned to visit his twin 14-year-old children from a previous relationship and take her to the beach.
“I don’t have a clue why someone would do this. I hope I get justice,” she said.
Officers from the Mon Repos Police Station, the Homicide Bureau of Investigations and other units within the Southern Division visited the scene. One spent 9mm shell was found near the body.
