Man gunned down after buying pizza at Valsayn food strip

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

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The man who was killed along the food strip near the Grand Bazaar Mall in Val­sayn dur­ing the ear­ly hours yes­ter­day has been iden­ti­fied as Cur­tis “Bird” Pierre.

Pierre, of Gopaul Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin, was said to have gone to pur­chase a piz­za af­ter leav­ing the Last Jam Car­ni­val Fete at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, when he was am­bushed by two gun­men.

The vic­tim had re­port­ed­ly just col­lect­ed the piz­za from an at­ten­dant at Naafa Piz­za, at the cor­ner of Ram­nar­ine Dri­ve and Bam­boo Boule­vard, and was in the process of dress­ing it when gun­men opened fire on him around 1.05 am yes­ter­day.

He ran across the road in a bid to es­cape but fell, fol­low­ing which the gun­men stood over him and con­tin­ued shoot­ing him about the face and up­per body. Sev­er­al of Pierre’s teeth, his gold watch and an emp­ty mus­tard bot­tle were seen in a pool of co­ag­u­lat­ed blood yes­ter­day, while bul­let holes were ob­served in the street sign and sev­er­al parts of the paved road were gouged out, sup­pos­ed­ly from the im­pact of the bul­lets.

Re­ports in­di­cate that Pierre, who had been in the coun­try to cel­e­brate Car­ni­val, had parked his white Hilux south along the road and pro­ceed­ed to or­der his food.

It was al­leged that a grey AD Wag­on pulled along­side his truck and stopped, fac­ing in a norther­ly di­rec­tion.

Two masked men, one armed with a ri­fle and an­oth­er with a pis­tol, re­port­ed­ly ex­it­ed that car and walked up to Pierre, whose back was turned and be­gan fir­ing at him.

They then fol­lowed him as he tried to run and con­tin­ued shoot­ing be­fore get­ting back in­to their wait­ing car, which sped off.

As near­by pa­trons alert­ed po­lice and stood look­ing on, two un­known men walked up to Pierre’s truck, fol­low­ing which one got in and drove off with it.

Peo­ple close to Pierre yes­ter­day con­firmed he had been liv­ing abroad, but ad­mit­ted he was known to the po­lice.

Res­i­dents liv­ing close to where the shoot­ing oc­curred de­clined to speak with re­porters but in­di­cat­ed they were “ter­ri­fied” over the in­ci­dent, not­ing the area is usu­al­ly very busy with peo­ple buy­ing food from the sev­er­al busi­ness­es on the stretch.

One man called on the po­lice to in­crease pa­trols, which he be­lieves could al­so help stem the rise in rob­beries along the busy food strip.