Venezuelan man killed in shooting outside Penal bar

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

A 23-year-old Venezue­lan na­tion­al was shot dead and an­oth­er Venezue­lan man wound­ed in a shoot­ing out­side a bar in Pe­nal dur­ing the ear­ly hours of Sun­day, just me­tres from the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion.

The de­ceased has been iden­ti­fied as Jhoskuein­er Rafael Co­tua Alexan­der, of Dook­ie Street, Pe­nal.

Po­lice iden­ti­fied the in­jured man as Thomas Wills Qui­ja­da Guar­iguta, 32, al­so a Venezue­lan na­tion­al.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 2.25 am, of­fi­cers on du­ty at the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion heard sev­er­al loud ex­plo­sions com­ing from Clarke Street, di­rect­ly out­side the sta­tion.

Mo­ments lat­er, a man known to po­lice re­port­ed­ly ran in­to the charge room shout­ing that some­one had been shot at a near­by bar and that oth­ers had been wound­ed be­fore flee­ing with­out pro­vid­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

Of­fi­cers rushed to the scene, where they found Alexan­der ly­ing mo­tion­less be­neath a shed near Sips and Chill Bar on Clarke Street with ap­par­ent gun­shot in­juries.

They al­so found Qui­ja­da Guar­iguta suf­fer­ing from a gun­shot wound to his right thigh.

Be­cause of the lan­guage bar­ri­er, of­fi­cers used the Google Trans­late ap­pli­ca­tion on a mo­bile phone to com­mu­ni­cate with the in­jured man be­fore tak­ing him to the Siparia Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he was treat­ed. Doc­tors de­ter­mined that he had sus­tained an en­try and ex­it gun­shot wound to his right thigh.

The dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer lat­er vis­it­ed the scene, pro­nounced Alexan­der dead and or­dered that his body be tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre for a post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered 11 spent 9mm shell cas­ings, a pro­jec­tile, a pair of black shoes and a black dig­i­tal watch from the scene.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said en­quiries re­vealed that Alexan­der had been lim­ing in front of the bar when gun­fire erupt­ed along Clarke Street, send­ing pa­trons and by­standers flee­ing in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. Af­ter the shoot­ing, he was found ly­ing wound­ed out­side the es­tab­lish­ment.

Po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the killing. Ini­tial as­sess­ments sug­gest the homi­cide may be drug-re­lat­ed.