In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to the mur­der of an Ari­ma woman out­side her home yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Po­lice said the vic­tim was Yvette Bap­tiste, 47, of Pin­to Road, Ari­ma.

Of­fi­cers said gun­shots were heard around 4 am and, fol­low­ing checks, Bap­tiste’s life­less body was found ly­ing out­side the house.

No mo­tive has as yet been es­tab­lished for the killing.

Ex­press­ing con­cern hours af­ter the mur­der in her con­stituen­cy, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said, “As an MP, you’re al­ways con­cerned about crime in your con­stituen­cy be­cause when you think about crime, you know, crime is a very com­pli­cat­ed is­sue.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing fluc­tu­a­tions in the crime sit­u­a­tion, she said that while un­em­ploy­ment was an is­sue that need­ed to be con­sid­ered, there was no con­crete or di­rect nexus be­tween the two.

“At the same time, we al­so know that in many com­mu­ni­ties, peo­ple are not em­ployed. CEPEP, Re­for­esta­tion, URP...it’s not an ex­cuse for you to get in­to crime if you’re not em­ployed,” she said.

But she con­tin­ued, “We all know as coun­cil­lors and as MP’s, that this is the most dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od for us with peo­ple com­ing to our of­fices, mak­ing re­quests for ham­pers, for school books. It’s re­al­ly very, very dif­fi­cult.”

Re­flect­ing on the State of Emer­gency (SoE) which ex­pired on Sep­tem­ber 17, Beck­les said the mul­ti­ple SoEs, cou­pled with the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill and the Home In­va­sion Bill – had not yield­ed the de­sired re­sults.

She said, “We have not re­al­ly seen the kind of re­duc­tion in crime that we ex­pect­ed, hav­ing re­gard to the in­ter­ven­tions that they have made.”

—An­na-Lisa Paul