Alexander denies endorsing curfew after remarks spark questions

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has sought to clar­i­fy com­ments that ap­peared to sug­gest he would sup­port a cur­few af­ter a triple shoot­ing in Laven­tille left two men and a tod­dler dead and re­newed pub­lic con­cern over vi­o­lent crime.

An­tho­ny “Mon­ster” Wil­son, 28, and Aquil “Fats” Kafi, 30, were shot dead along Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road around 8.35 am yes­ter­day.

Kafi’s 23-month-old son, Aki­ni, lat­er died from his in­juries at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, while the child’s moth­er, An­to­nia Cain-Kafi, 36, re­mained in crit­i­cal con­di­tion up to last night.

As Alexan­der left Par­lia­ment ear­li­er to­day, Guardian Me­dia ques­tioned him about the gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse in the wake of the killings.

“Ba­by Aki­ni would have died. Peo­ple are look­ing to the gov­ern­ment for its re­sponse now, Min­is­ter,” he was told.

“You were just ask­ing Mar­vin, what he say?” Alexan­der replied, ap­pear­ing to ref­er­ence an ear­li­er in­ter­view with PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

When asked whether he would ad­vise Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to con­sid­er im­pos­ing a cur­few amid ris­ing vi­o­lent crime and home in­va­sions, Alexan­der re­spond­ed: “Yeah,” be­fore clos­ing the door of his ve­hi­cle and start­ing the en­gine.

But hours lat­er, the min­is­ter con­tact­ed Guardian Me­dia, in­sist­ing he had not been re­spond­ing to the re­porter’s ques­tion.

“I didn’t an­swer you all. I an­swered my se­cu­ri­ty de­tail as to if I was go­ing to change in my car how you all came up with that?” he said.

Alexan­der was lat­er seen ex­it­ing the ve­hi­cle dressed in tra­di­tion­al In­di­an at­tire, hav­ing ini­tial­ly en­tered wear­ing a suit.

The ex­change un­fold­ed ahead of a sched­uled diplo­mat­ic vis­it by In­dia’s Min­is­ter of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, Dr Sub­rah­manyam Jais­hankar, who ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go for a two-day vis­it aimed at strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al ties be­tween the two coun­tries.