A trip for a late-night snack cost a nine-year-old boy his life on Friday as he was shot several times in what police believe was crossfire between warring gangs in La Romaine, south Trinidad.
Seon Paul, of Byron Street, La Romaine, was due to start Standard Two at the La Romaine RC School next month.
He was with his 13-year-old cousin Kenika Smalls and several other children sitting by the roadside in front of his grandmother’s home at around 9 pm, when his father gave him $30 to buy hot dogs. Seon asked Kenika to accompany him to a food truck on the Southern Main Road.
“I asked where we was going and he said the food truck right on the corner, so I went with him,” Kenika said. “When we reached out on the junction and turn to go by the food truck, we start hearing gunshots.”
When they heard the first explosion, the cousins began to run, trying to get out of the line of fire.
“We were running down by the gas station, trying to get behind a car and hide but when Seon try to jump in some bushes, I heard him bawl ‘Ouch’ and then he fell,” Kenika said.
When the frantic teen realised Seon was bleeding from a wound in the chest, she ran home to alert relatives.
“Two of my aunties were on the road and they ran up to see who got shoot. A lot of people came out and tried to help him and then the police came and took him to the hospital,” she said.
Seon was taken into emergency surgery at the San Fernando General Hospital but succumbed to his injuries shortly after 10 pm.
At her Byron Street home yesterday, his grandmother Janet Charles could barely contain her grief and wept constantly. She said her only daughter, Seon’s mother Safiya Williams, was not coping well and could not speak.
She expressed frustration with police officers who regularly patrol the area.
“The police driving up and down all day, but when it comes to take action against the fellas with the guns, they not doing anything,” she said.
“I want justice for my grandchild. He was a baby, he never so much as disrespect anyone but they kill him on the street?”
Charles said she was at home when she heard the gunshots.
“I see him when he walked out the road and about three minutes passed and I went inside in the kitchen. Then I heard ‘Pow, pow, pow, pow,’ I say ‘Oh God, I hope is not my grandchild.’”
Charles said her family tries to stay far from the ongoing drug and gang wars in La Romaine.
“This has been going on for too long and the police can’t solve any of the murders in La Romaine,” she said.
An autopsy is expected to be done on Seon’s body tomorrow at the Forensic Science Centre in Port-of-Spain.