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Roughly six weeks after a mass shooting in Gonzales, Hasani Bonas, 29, and Jahiem Shallo, 19, were gunned down on Friday evening while standing on the road near Agostini Street, Gonzales, Belmont.
Police said around 4 pm on July 12, three vehicles stopped where Bonas and Shallo were standing and several gunshots were heard.
The vehicles then sped off.
Speaking with the media on July 12, Bonas’s mother Kemba Bonas said her son was a loving, free-spirited person and the type of child mothers would ask for.
“If my head hurt me, he there. If I want somewhere to live, he finding that place for me.”
Bonas said her son was independent from a young age and did everything for himself.
“When he was 17, he went and organise his own licence, he saw about his own passport, he did everything for himself, I didn’t have to do anything.”
Bonas said tearfully, “Hasani recently built his own place, he ain’t live long to enjoy it.”
She said a lot of young men in the area were being targeted because of gang-warfare – “just because you’re from the area.”
She said she had lived in the area since the age of four and all of her children grew up in Gonzales as well.
“All I can continue doing is praying for my kids – I have three others (children) and two grandsons – and I’ll continue to pray for the youths of the area.”
The murders of Bonas and Shallo come about six weeks after another Gonzales shooting incident on claimed the lives of four men on June 2.
In that incident, police said a group of men were liming near a school in Gonzales, Belmont, after a game of football. Without warning, gunmen arrived in a car and began shooting. One man was killed and several others injured.
The injured men were taken to the Port of Spain General Hospital, but moments after their arrival, masked gunmen also stormed the hospital in a car. While relatives of the wounded men and medics were trying to get the victims into the hospital’s accident and emergency department, the gunmen got out of their car and opened fire.
Three men were killed at the hospital and another man was shot and wounded.
Jayden Reyes, 21, Peter Williams, 31, Kevin “Grimes” King, 33, and Johnathon “Johnny/Jman” Arjoon, 23 all died in that incident
