Cops uncover new evidence contradicting Sturge’s claim on deadly Belmont, Morvant attacks

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers in­ves­ti­gat­ing the Bel­mont triple mur­der that saw a 23-month-old tod­dler killed say the killing is not linked to the quadru­ple mur­der three weeks ago in Mor­vant that saw an­oth­er child mur­dered.

Of­fi­cers close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion yes­ter­day re­vealed that their in­quiries since the in­ci­dent had led them to con­clude that the two mass killings were not linked to each oth­er, and they were mov­ing for­ward with in­for­ma­tion they had since re­ceived. They, how­ev­er, re­fused to dis­close fur­ther de­tails.

Yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau re­turned to Bel­mont seek­ing to com­pile more in­for­ma­tion to help them solve the mur­ders. They hand­ed out fly­ers, call­ing on res­i­dents to step up and as­sist them in their probe.

Guardian Me­dia was in the com­mu­ni­ty and saw the of­fi­cers al­so plac­ing the fly­ers in mail­box­es, un­der wind­shield wipers and giv­ing them to res­i­dents.

The fly­ers read: “Enough is Enough. Do Some­thing now!! We want to help you. Time to put a stop to crime.”

Aqiyl “Fats” Kafi, 30, and An­tho­ny “Mon­ster” Wil­son, 28, were killed af­ter gun­men am­bushed the car they were trav­el­ling in along Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road around 8.35 am on May 7. Kafi’s tod­dler son Aki­ni Kafi was de­clared dead at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal mo­ments lat­er, while his moth­er, An­to­nia Cain-Kafi, 36, re­mains ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

On April 19, nine-year-old J’lay­na Arm­strong was one of four peo­ple shot and killed when gun­men am­bushed a car she was trav­el­ling in along the La­dy Young Road in Mor­vant.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said the two in­ci­dents were linked.

He said then: “I’m sure he (MP for the area Stu­art Young) knows that the mur­ders yes­ter­day (April 7) are con­nect­ed to the mur­ders in La­dy Young, the quadru­ple mur­der. It’s con­nect­ed. And we know where they are from. We know, we’ve seen all the wakes and all the cry­ing. We know Belle Eau Road is in play. We know Ser­ra­no Road is in play.”

How­ev­er, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Stu­art Young chal­lenged Sturge’s claims and de­fend­ed his con­stituents then, say­ing, “I state here this evening, I have no idea and no clue who are the crim­i­nal el­e­ments that per­pe­trat­ed this heinous crime. I do not know those crim­i­nal el­e­ments and I’ve nev­er in­ter­act­ed with them.”

Asked about Sturge’s rev­e­la­tion on Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said he could not speak to any con­nec­tion.

“I will not be able to con­firm that con­nec­tion for you at this time. The po­lice ser­vice is un­der­tak­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and I wouldn’t want to share too much of that in­for­ma­tion with the pub­lic,” Gue­var­ro said.

Pressed fur­ther, giv­en that Sturge’s com­ments seemed to come from the po­lice, Gue­var­ro added: “It is not my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to speak af­ter the min­is­ter.”

Dur­ing the TTPS Sports and Fam­i­ly Day on Sat­ur­day, Gue­var­ro al­so en­cour­aged Bel­mont res­i­dents to as­sist the po­lice with the probe, as he ad­mon­ished those who har­bour their crim­i­nal­ly mind­ed rel­a­tives.

“It is your sons, broth­ers, your fam­i­ly, you know that they are in pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal weapons and they are com­mit­ting these heinous crimes and you are re­main­ing silent. That in it­self is an in­dict­ment on so­ci­ety and how we should ap­proach, how we deal with crim­i­nal­i­ty in go­ing for­ward,” Gue­var­ro said.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der al­so said com­mu­ni­ties need to step for­ward and as­sist po­lice in solv­ing crimes.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the po­lice’s lat­est claim that the two in­ci­dents were not re­lat­ed, how­ev­er, Sturge told Guardian Me­dia he is stand­ing by his state­ment.

“That might ex­plain why de­tec­tion rates have been his­tor­i­cal­ly low, and con­vic­tion rates are even low­er. As a for­mer crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney, my po­si­tion is that un­til I see cred­i­ble ev­i­dence to the con­trary, backed up by charges laid, I will main­tain what I said in the Par­lia­ment and which is based on the in­tel­li­gence on the ground. Small won­der why con­vic­tion rates in gang- re­lat­ed mat­ters, and un­der An­ti-Gang Act in par­tic­u­lar, is clos­er to ze­ro,” Sturge said.

An­tho­ny “Mon­ster” Wil­son’s grand­moth­er, Joan Wil­son, says the an­swer to the crime woes lies in di­vine in­ter­ven­tion.

“These young peo­ple need God in their lives,” she said, adding that politi­cians of­fer no help in solv­ing crime.

“The Gov­ern­ment is a waste of time. Both sides! Be­cause when is elec­tion you will see them and af­ter that, you won’t see them or you don’t hear them for the next five years.”

De­spite po­lice say­ing that Wil­son was the in­tend­ed tar­get, the 75-year-old said her grand­son was not a crim­i­nal and had no crim­i­nal his­to­ry. She said he got the name “Mon­ster” as a child, af­ter a friend jok­ing­ly said he smelled like one be­cause of his re­luc­tance to bathe reg­u­lar­ly. And while the name stuck, she was not fond of him re­spond­ing to it be­cause of the neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions.

Con­trary to oth­er claims, she said her grand­son was killed be­cause of his re­fusal to join a gang.

“A lot of things that we didn’t stand for, it had peo­ple that were against us be­cause we didn’t stand for the non­sense. That is the type of per­son An­tho­ny was. He didn’t stand for the non­sense,” she said.

She said Wil­son would tell them he had his fam­i­ly liv­ing in the area and did not want to ex­pose them to any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. The fam­i­ly, for the most part, she said, kept to them­selves.

While the po­lice were hop­ing to get in­for­ma­tion from the res­i­dents, Wil­son’s moth­er, Pe­tra Wil­son, is call­ing on the po­lice to do more.

“I would let them know what go­ing on. They need to do their wuk, yuh un­der­stand. Be­cause if they had do they wuk, my son would have been alive.”

She said since the killing, she has been un­able to sleep and is now hop­ing to bury her on­ly son soon.

While po­lice were can­vass­ing St Fran­cois Val­ley Road, hop­ing for as­sis­tance, one res­i­dent, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said Bel­mont is not a bad place and like oth­er ar­eas, would have spikes in crimes from time to time. The woman said more needs to be done to ad­dress crime.

“How much can the Gov­ern­ment do and how much can the po­lice do in terms of crime? It starts in the home right? At the end of the day, it starts in the home. The younger gen­er­a­tion com­ing up right now is quite dif­fer­ent from what we had to deal with.”

She added that it seemed no one is able to get through to the youth and speak to them about not in­volv­ing them­selves in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.