Defence Ministry laments eastern murders

Shane Su­perville

As in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the mur­ders of San­gre Grande busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra on March 13 and his em­ploy­ee Ron­dell Adol­phus, al­so known as ‘Patch’, days lat­er on Mon­day night, the Min­istry of De­fence says pro­tec­tive ser­vices re­main en­gaged to pre­vent fur­ther blood­shed.

Guer­ra, 48, was shot and killed out­side his of­fice at Guy Trace, San­gre Grande, by gun­men who es­caped in a white Nis­san Ti­i­da.

Adol­phus, 34, po­lice said, had left his cab­in at a Matu­ra re­sort to get ice when he was gunned down.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd sent ques­tions to Min­is­ter of De­fence and To­co/San­gre Grande MP Wayne Sturge on Tues­day but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.

A Min­istry of De­fence spokesper­son re­spond­ed on Wednes­day morn­ing, de­scrib­ing the killings as “un­ac­cept­able” and stat­ing that ef­forts to re­duce vi­o­lence were un­der­way through “in­tel­li­gence-led” op­er­a­tions.

Re­fer­ring to the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, the spokesper­son said sev­er­al an­ti-crime mea­sures were be­ing utilised.

“Un­der the State of Emer­gency, op­er­a­tions are ac­tive and on­go­ing, and our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies are mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments close­ly.

“You can be as­sured that they are ac­tive­ly en­gaged and are main­tain­ing pres­ence where need­ed, as well as work­ing close­ly across all arms of the se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus un­der the State of Emer­gency.

“The fo­cus, as it al­ways has been, is on sup­port­ing law en­force­ment, main­tain­ing or­der, and en­sur­ing that all avail­able re­sources are be­ing de­ployed ef­fec­tive­ly.”

The spokesper­son added that Sturge sought to as­sure the pub­lic that the sit­u­a­tion is be­ing “ac­tive­ly man­aged,” as the State re­mains en­gaged.