PM heartbroken over Belmont triple killings

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she is heart­bro­ken over the re­cent triple killing in Bel­mont that claimed the lives of 23-month-old Aki­ni Kafi, his fa­ther Aquil Kafi and fam­i­ly friend An­tho­ny Wil­son.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions at Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing an MoU sign­ing with In­dia’s Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Sub­rah­manyam Jais­hankar, and an agree­ment ex­change and lap­top han­dover cer­e­mo­ny, the Prime Min­is­ter ex­pressed sad­ness over the deaths, par­tic­u­lar­ly that of the tod­dler.

“Every life lost is a heart­break to many, and es­pe­cial­ly when it is a child, it is a tragedy. I know our law en­force­ment of­fi­cials are do­ing the best they can to get be­hind that tragedy and our hearts go out and con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies and their loved ones,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so as­sured cit­i­zens that law en­force­ment of­fi­cials were con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent.

Mean­while, re­spond­ing to ques­tions on whether Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing im­ple­ment­ing a cur­few to strength­en the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said no such mea­sure is be­ing con­sid­ered at this time.

“At this point in time, no cur­few, the num­bers have gone down, it has to go down fur­ther, if we did not have the SoE, the num­bers would have been high­er,” she stat­ed. Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Bel­mont killings re­main on­go­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Aki­ni’s fa­ther, Aquil “Fats” Kafi, 30, and fam­i­ly friend An­tho­ny “Mon­ster” Wil­son, 28, were killed when gun­men opened fire on the car they were in along Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road around 8.35 am. The gun­men, who blocked the vic­tim’s car, chased Kafi and Wil­son af­ter they ran out of their ve­hi­cle seek­ing safe­ty and shot them. Aki­ni’s moth­er, An­to­nia Cain-Kafi, al­though she too was shot,scooped the tod­dler up and ran down­hill for help. A pri­vate cit­i­zen lat­er rushed the two to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal but Aki­ni lat­er suc­cumbed to his in­juries. His moth­er, 36, re­mained ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion last night.

Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge yes­ter­day linked that at­tack to the April 19 in­ci­dent in which nine-year-old J’Lay­na Arm­strong was one of four peo­ple shot and killed when gun­men am­bushed a car they were in along the La­dy Young Road in Mor­vant.