Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A rel­a­tive of two Matelot broth­ers killed over the week­end has blamed their mur­ders on in­creas­ing­ly hos­tile crim­i­nals in the neigh­bour­hood who have tar­get­ed res­i­dents.

De­spite these risks, the woman said she re­fus­es to be in­tim­i­dat­ed by crim­i­nals, and urges the po­lice to act quick­ly in se­cur­ing their com­mu­ni­ty.

Arnott Isaac, 16, and Akeil Isaac, 26, were at their Rose­hill home with two friends on Sun­day af­ter­noon when they left to pick man­goes near­by.

How­ev­er, short­ly af­ter leav­ing, the broth­ers and their friends were am­bushed by gun­men in a near­by track.

Both broth­ers died at the scene, while one of their friends es­caped with­out harm and the oth­er was shot in the left hand.

Po­lice vis­it­ed the scene and found 15 spent 5.56 shells.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia via phone yes­ter­day, the woman said she was deeply hurt af­ter los­ing two rel­a­tives to vi­o­lence, but said she felt their mur­ders were re­lat­ed to the pres­ence of crim­i­nals in Matelot.

Re­fer­ring to an in­ci­dent on April 7 last year, she said the ten­sion arose when Arnott tried to de­fend a school­mate who was threat­ened by a knife-wield­ing man in the com­mu­ni­ty. Since that in­ci­dent, she said the fam­i­ly has faced vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing shots be­ing fired at their home.

She said on De­cem­ber 4, gun­men shot at Arnott out­side their house. A re­port was made at the Matelot Po­lice Sta­tion but she claimed of­fi­cers there even­tu­al­ly told them the San­gre Grande po­lice would do the in­ves­ti­ga­tions to find the bul­lets. The San­gre Grande po­lice nev­er came, she said.

The rel­a­tive said she felt law en­force­ment had failed the fam­i­ly, as sev­er­al com­plaints and re­ports were made to po­lice with­out any re­lief or ac­tion.

Asked if she was afraid for her own safe­ty, the woman said while she was sad­dened by the loss of Arnott and Akeil, she was not moved by the crim­i­nals.

“I am not feel­ing fear be­cause I am not let­ting any­one in­ject fear in­to me. I am not leav­ing my home­town and I’m not leav­ing my home,” she said.

“What I want is the au­thor­i­ties to buck up and do what they need to do to get these fel­las and them. Get a war­rant and find their place, find where they are.”

She said the nine-year-old sis­ter of Arnott and Akeil was deeply shak­en af­ter the mur­ders, but was still do­ing her best to be strong.

Arnott at­tend­ed the Matelot Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, while Akeil worked as an op­er­a­tor in the Forestry Di­vi­sion.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin ad­mit­ted that out of all ten po­lice di­vi­sions, the East­ern and South West­ern Di­vi­sions were the on­ly two di­vi­sions whose mur­der tolls con­tin­ued to trend up­wards.

As of yes­ter­day, there had been three mur­ders in the East­ern Di­vi­sion com­pared to ze­ro for the same pe­ri­od last year, while there was one mur­der in the South West­ern Di­vi­sion, com­pared to ze­ro for the same pe­ri­od last year.

He said the TTPS had not­ed these trends and would place added fo­cus on these di­vi­sions.

“We are see­ing the lit­tle upticks so we are putting the nec­es­sary strate­gies in place to aug­ment and al­so to as­sist these di­vi­sions so we have the nec­es­sary strength there to deal with any mur­ders,” Ben­jamin said.

The East­ern Di­vi­sion is one of the largest po­lice di­vi­sions in Trinidad, ex­tend­ing from Matelot in the north to Rio Claro in the south, cov­er­ing the en­tire east coast.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day, head of the East­ern Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Christo­pher Pa­ponette, said while he was aware of the con­cerns of Matelot res­i­dents over crim­i­nals in their com­mu­ni­ty, po­lice op­er­a­tions were hin­dered giv­en the forest­ed area with­in the di­vi­sion.

“The re­gion’s dense veg­e­ta­tion, forest­ed ter­rain and ex­ten­sive reach sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pede the main­te­nance of rou­tine pa­trols and con­sis­tent sur­veil­lance,” Pa­ponette said.

“We have aug­ment­ed pa­trols in hard-to-reach ar­eas and are im­ple­ment­ing in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven op­er­a­tions to iden­ti­fy and mon­i­tor sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ties.”

But apart from the com­mu­ni­ty’s lay­out, Pa­ponette not­ed that such iso­lat­ed ar­eas can at­tract ex­ter­nal crim­i­nals.

“It is al­so per­ti­nent to note that such rur­al and re­mote com­mu­ni­ties such as Matelot can at­tract in­di­vid­u­als seek­ing to evade de­tec­tion; how­ev­er, such cir­cum­stances do not in­di­cate com­pla­cen­cy on our part. We are ex­plor­ing var­i­ous strate­gies to mit­i­gate these ge­o­graph­ic chal­lenges,” he said.

He al­so called on res­i­dents to main­tain close con­tact with their lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cers.

Al­so speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, coun­cil­lor for Va­len­cia East/To­co Ani­cia Williams-Pen­ny de­scribed the mur­ders of the Isaac broth­ers as “shock­ing and heart wrench­ing,” and agreed more should be done to se­cure Matelot.

Re­fer­ring to the lay­out of the com­mu­ni­ty from ac­cess roads, Williams-Pen­ny added that the killers were like­ly among the vil­lagers.

“When you look at it, it (the com­mu­ni­ty) is ac­ces­si­ble one way in, one way out to an ex­tent so the per­pe­tra­tors are prob­a­bly right there and this is some­thing that has to be dealt with se­vere­ly,” she said.

“I want the au­thor­i­ties to bring back Matelot to where it used to be, where vil­lagers would leave their home and win­dows open.”

She not­ed that while in­creased at­ten­tion from po­lice would be ap­pre­ci­at­ed, she hoped con­struc­tion of a new Matelot Po­lice Sta­tion would be­gin soon to fur­ther strength­en the abil­i­ty of lo­cal po­lice in fight­ing crime.

“I’m just wait­ing to see de­vel­op­ment hap­pen, be­cause there is a con­tain­er be­ing used as a po­lice post, so there isn’t much fa­cil­i­ties,” Williams-Pen­ny said.

“The po­lice don’t have the phys­i­cal re­sources for them to be com­fort­able and do their jobs, so some­thing needs to be done to get our po­lice sta­tion there.”

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion II are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries in­to the mur­ders of the broth­ers.