Young, Alexander trade jabs on Facebook over Belmont murders

Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der fol­low­ing the killing of three peo­ple, in­clud­ing a two-year-old child, dur­ing a shoot­ing in Bel­mont on Thurs­day.

In a so­cial me­dia state­ment, Alexan­der said, “PNM con­stituen­cies out of con­trol. Two-year-old among three mur­dered in Bel­mont this morn­ing.” He al­so re­ferred to what he de­scribed as a lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, ed­u­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties, skills train­ing, so­cial sup­port and jobs in Bel­mont.

Alexan­der stat­ed, “Bel­mont is a per­fect ex­am­ple of what hap­pens to good peo­ple when bad pol­i­tics pre­vails.” He fur­ther claimed that, “Every PNM com­mu­ni­ty is failed. Every. Sin­gle. One.”

Alexan­der al­so ar­gued that a Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions in Bel­mont could have re­duced crime in the com­mu­ni­ty.

He said, “That two year old would be alive right now if Bel­mont was un­der a ZOSO and in the con­trol of law en­force­ment and the army with So­cial De­vel­op­ment rein­vent­ing lives to pros­per­i­ty and peace.”

In a sec­ond Face­book post on the is­sue, Young said, “I am an­gry, dis­turbed and sad­dened by yet an­oth­er mass shoot­ing and the mur­der of three peo­ple in­clud­ing an in­no­cent 2 year old child in Bel­mont this morn­ing. This hor­rif­ic crime was car­ried out in broad day­light. It is clear that the Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment has NO CRIME PLAN apart from states of emer­gency which we have said can­not be a crime plan.”

Young al­so crit­i­cised Alexan­der’s re­marks. He said, “Then to have a so called ju­nior Min­is­ter who is noth­ing more than a de­ranged per­son be­ing paid by Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar us­ing tax pay­ers’ mon­ey go­ing on a racist rant about my con­stituents in Bel­mont is adding in­sult to the pain that cit­i­zens are al­ready feel­ing with the loss of life.”

Young said the crime sit­u­a­tion was “in­tol­er­a­ble” and ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the rel­a­tives of the vic­tims, in­clud­ing the child iden­ti­fied as Akin­ni.