Senior Reporter
sascha.wilson@guardian.co.tt
Point Fortin father of two, Brent Lewis, was planning his wedding in August and was expanding his apparel printing business.
Tragically, the 38-year-old was executed in a volley of bullets in his hometown of Techier Village around 8.45 pm on Tuesday shortly after receiving a phone call to meet someone about a job.
Lewis was sitting on an iron frame at the front of a parlour at the corner of First Street when a white Nissan Tiida pulled up and two men exited, firing several shots at him.
Elvis Nelson, 64, the parlour owner, who was sitting next to him seconds before the shooting, recalled that Lewis came to his shop, bought a cigarette and they began conversing. He heard Lewis tell a caller on his phone that he was waiting for ten minutes, after which he walked across and sat on the iron frame.
Nelson sat opposite him and heard him telling the caller, “I waiting again a lil ten minutes here, otherwise I gone.”
Nelson then got up to check the fish that he was frying inside the parlour, but as he got to the door he heard “the rattling.”
Bystanders who were standing near the parlour were forced to run for cover.
Nelson made a passionate appeal for an end to violence in the community and the country.
“I fed up with the boom. I fed up with the bang. I fed up with the warring. I fed up with the crime. I fed up with the violence. Time for violence to stop. Bring we country back,” he said.
Declaring that he had no fear of “the gunman” because of his deep connection with God, he said, “When your day reach, it reach, but your day should not reach like that. It should never be like that. You have to give a man about 21 shot to done him. What kind of animal we is?”
Police recovered 27 spent 9 mm shells at the scene.
Speaking at their nearby home, Lewis’ mother Juliana Rauseo-Lewis, 71, recalled that her son was at home when someone visiting from the United States called him “to take a drink.”
While he was out, she said, a woman called him to do a printing job, and he walked to the parlour.
While people believe he was set up, Rauseo-Lewis said she did not want to speculate. However, she said her son, the youngest of her five children, was not a troublemaker and was renovating their home to set up his business. He was also the father of two children ages 18 and five.
The mother was not confident that she would get justice, but she had a message for her son’s killers.
“It have a God and what goes around, comes around. I leaving it for God to forgive them. Let God do the forgiveness,” she said.
Residents who spoke with Guardian Media off-record were shocked and saddened over the murder. They said they did not know Lewis to be involved in any illegal activities.
However, residents said he had received a death threat from someone in the village on Monday and had a recent altercation with a man during the Borough Day celebrations.
Officers of the Homicide Bureau of Investigations Region 3 are investigating.