Teen killed, two shot during J’Ouvert revelry

Of­fi­cers of the Re­gion I Homi­cide Bu­reau and the Port-of-Spain CID were kept busy on Car­ni­val Mon­day as a 19-year-old man was killed and two peo­ple were shot in two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in Wood­brook and Ari­api­ta Av­enue, St James.

Po­lice said the in­ci­dent oc­curred dur­ing J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing, Car­ni­val Gold Com­man­der and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Suzette Mar­tin con­firmed that a man was stabbed to death at the cor­ner of De Ver­teuil Street and Ari­api­ta Av­enue dur­ing J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions.

Po­lice sources lat­er con­firmed that the man was iden­ti­fied as 19-year-old Jay­den Rouff of Laven­tille.

Sources said the teen was at­tacked dur­ing the crowd­ed cel­e­bra­tions and sus­tained life-threat­en­ing in­juries.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Rouff was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he was de­clared dead short­ly af­ter ar­rival.

Po­lice al­so con­firmed that two men were wound­ed dur­ing a shoot­ing at the cor­ner of Mu­cu­rapo Road and Damien Street, St James.

They were iden­ti­fied as a 20-year-old and a 24-year-old, both from Laven­tille. The 20-year-old was shot in the leg, while the 24-year-old was shot in the right foot.

Both men re­mained hos­pi­talised un­til late yes­ter­day evening and were said to be in sta­ble con­di­tion.

—Shane Su­perville

And po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a re­port of sex­u­al as­sault which oc­curred dur­ing J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said a 34-year-old woman of Diego Mar­tin re­port­ed that around 9.08 am, while along Tra­garete Road in the vicin­i­ty of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture build­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing with a J’Ou­vert band, she was ap­proached from be­hind by a male in­di­vid­ual.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the sus­pect be­gan danc­ing be­hind the vic­tim and sub­se­quent­ly en­gaged in an al­leged non-con­sen­su­al sex­u­al con­tact. The vic­tim im­me­di­ate­ly pushed the sus­pect away as he at­tempt­ed to leave the area.

Se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel with the band in­ter­vened prompt­ly, de­tained the sus­pect, and hand­ed him over to re­spond­ing po­lice of­fi­cers. The vic­tim pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied the in­di­vid­ual, who was tak­en in­to cus­tody at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion.