A brazen daylight shooting took place in Tunapuna yesterday mere hours before the top national security officials gave the nation the assurance that increased patrols were in effect to stem the rising murder toll.
The killing was one of two more murders recorded over the past 24 hours, pushing the murder toll to 268 for the year.
Investigators said gunmen ambushed Chevaughn Bramble, 25, outside his home at El Dorado Road, located close to the district’s health centre, shortly after noon. He was shot in the back in what police said was a dispute over an illegal gun. The gunman escaped by running up a nearby mountain at the top of El Dorado Road.
The father of two, who was expecting the birth of a third child, was taken the Eric Williams Medical Science Complex, Mt Hope, where he was pronounced dead.
Bramble’s mother Volouris Maynard gave a different account to the police report.
Maynard said around 12.15 pm she was dressing to get ready to go out and her son was outside his home which is off the El Dorado Road when a white Nissan Tiida pulled up and opened fire. She said the gunmen began shooting Bramble just as he turned to walk into his yard.
Maynard told the T&T Guardian her son was a labourer attached to the San Juan/Laventille Regional Corporation. She added that her son, who celebrated his birthday two Saturdays ago, was a quiet man who kept to himself and she had no idea why anyone would want him dead.
Police on the other hand say he was killed for his involvement in a recent shooting in the Tunapuna area over a gun. The shooting, police said, was the motive behind the killing of Dillon Douglas, 22, who was shot dead near his home at Balthazar Street, Tunapuna, on July 27.
Police said both men were responsible for shooting up the home of another gangster’s mother in the area and their deaths were linked to that shooting.
Other relatives who were at the scene of the shooting recalled that Bramble earned the nickname “Beast”, at the age of two when he fell out of a moving car and came out unscathed.
Relatives said Bramble loved to sing but was a horrible singer. He was also a football player with WASA FC. A friend of Bramble’s posted on Facebook the labourer wanted to “change his life around and live for his children.”
In an unrelated murder, police are searching for a motive behind the shooting death of 52-year-old Wintley Manswell who was killed as he slept at his home at Superville, Morvant, on Monday night.
Police reports stated that around 9 pm gunmen stormed the man’s home and opened fire, killing him in his bed. The execution style killing was reminiscent of a double murder in the St Joseph area on Saturday morning where two men—Idi Farrell and Anthony Lalla—were killed on a double decker bed as they slept.
Region Two homicide officers are continuing investigations into both murders.