The grieving father of a a teenaged murder victim said yesterday that he relocated his family from Laventille in an attempt top spare them from the gun and gang violence in the community.
But he said the stubbornness of his 19-year-old son, Luke Adams, led to his death.
Adams who was seated in the front passenger seat of a blue Mitsubishi Lancer was shot repeatedly around 11.30 am by a gunman who ran after the vehicle which was stuck in traffic on the busy Duke Street close to midday. Another occupant in the car was injured in the shooting and the killer escaped.
Speaking with the media at the Forensic Science Centre, St James yesterday, Bertram Adams said his third of seven children failed adhere to his warnings not to venture into Port-of-Spain and paid with his life for his stubbornness.
He said he had relocated the family to Pleasantville, in San Fernando two years ago to protect them.
But his son moved back to the city after he became an adult.
“I do more than warn him, I actually went myself in these areas to try and get him out. Men pull gun for me and ask me who is me. When I say Luke father they say well you don’t come in here just so. That was the ultimate. That was a couple months ago. I talk to him every time I see him. Everyone talk to him, his aunt, the grandmother, boy everyone talk to him. Everyone liked him, but he just wanted to do what he want and what he felt was right. And that was a major problem.”
The Adams family moved from their Desperlie Crescent, Laventille home to Pleasantville two years ago.
Since then, Luke would leave his southern home, which he found to be “too slow and dead” and spend days with friends in Nelson Street and then more recently at Mango Rose, off Piccadilly Street.
The two areas, separated by the East Dry River and Duncan Street, are at war with each other.
Police suspect that Adams was killed for being deemed a traitor after leaving one area to stay in another. His father said his girlfriend lived at Mango Rose and he too believed his son’s switch in residence led to his death.
“I speak to him more than 1,000 times, I do all kind of thing, I pull the devil by the tail and all to try to get him to settle down at home, and stay away from Mango Rose. And he’s not a stupid guy. I believed that he understood the nature of life. Because he grow up in Desperlie Crescent where you hear the gunshots every day,” Adams said.
He said he taught his son and his siblings from young to lay on the floor when they heard gunshots and not move until the bullets stopped.
Adams is the second son of his mother to be murdered. On October 27, 2016, at a house at Enterprise, Chaguanas, Keron “Panther” James was gunned down.