Nine-year-old Emmanuel Edwards, bareback and with no shoes on his feet, ran out his home through the mud screaming, “Uncle Dyer, Uncle Dyer,” only to find his uncle covered in blood on the roadway along Teelucksingh Street, California, Couva, on Tuesday night.
Emmanuel’s uncle, Junior Greenidge, 43, was shot several times by two gunmen who also wounded two other men during their attack around 8.30 pm at a parlour a stone’s throw away from Greenidge’s home.
Kernell Neptune, 21, and his friend, Allon Parris, 30, who live on the street, remained warded at the San Fernando General Hospital nursing gunshot wounds to the legs yesterday.
Greenidge, a labourer at the Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo Regional Corporation (CTTRC), was taken in a police vehicle to the Couva District Hospital but succumbed to his injuries. Police have detained two suspects in connection with the incident.
Speaking with the T&T Guardian yesterday, an eyewitness, who didn’t want to be identified, said Greenidge was in the parlour with Neptune and Parris when the gunmen, dressed in hoodies, ran in.
They shot Neptune and Parris, then turned their guns on Greenidge. As they opened fire on Greenidge, one of the gunmen said: “We have to shoot you because you saw us.” The gunmen then ran off. It is believed a getaway car was waiting on a nearby street.
The eyewitness got a full view of the gunmen as the ran off.
“They were young and they had the hoods over their heads. I saw one of them, after the shooting, run to a neighbour’s yard and pull back his hoodie over his head as it had fallen off during the shooting.”
Greenidge’s sister-in-law, Bernadine Edwards, said three years ago he came to live with her after separating with his wife.
“He lived in Morvant and left his wife and their two children and came here to start over his life. I did not mind because he was the coolest, calmest and sweetest person I have ever met,” Edwards said. She said it was sad to see her brother-in-law die in that manner.
“He didn’t deserve to die like that. About eight days ago he started working at the corporation and he adored my children and was really close to them. My son is really traumatised, as we all are, over this. We are yet to tell his (Greenidge’s) children that their father is dead.”
Edwards said she was home with her husband, who is Greenidge’s brother, when they heard gunshots.
“When we hear the shots, my husband said ‘Oh God. I hope that is not Dyer (Greenidge’s nickname).’ We knew that he was not home and had gone to the parlour. When we run out of the house and ran to the parlour we saw him lying on the ground,” she said, wiping away tears.
“He was just at the wrong place and at the wrong time,” she added.
Neptune’s mother, Joanna Bonaparte, admitted her son and his friend were threatened before but they never took it seriously. She, however, did not say where the threats would have come from.
“It was just talks but I didn’t know it would have come to this,” Bonaparte said, adding all three men were close friends.
She called on police to get serious in clamping down on spiralling crime and to get rid of all the illegal guns on the streets.