Listen when your parents talk and you would do well on earth.
This was the message sent by Eunice Ester Julien, the mother of a 27-year-old Diego Martin resident Chelsea Julien, who was among four persons, including a three-year-old boy, who were murdered while returning home from a wedding early yesterday.
Julien added: “Children, be obedient to your parents.”
According to reports, around 1.20 am, Julien, her boyfriend Akeil Keron “Crime B” Gloster, their 22-year-old friend Marcus “Markie” Noel, Nicholas “Calke Boss” Owen, 31, his girlfriend Khadija Vilbara and Owen and Vilbara’s three-year-old son Nizam, were heading along the Diego Martin Main Road in a car when they were ambushed by gunmen near the corner of Winnie Mohammed Road.
CCTV footage of the shooting, which was subsequently shared on social media, showed the gunmen, who were driving behind the friends in a white station wagon and are suspected to have followed them from the wedding, shooting at Noel’s Nissan B15 while overtaking it.
Noel’s car then veered left off the road and crashed into a wall.
All six occupants were shot but Julien, Gloster and Noel died on the scene.
Residents took Owen, Vilbara and their son to the St James Medical Facility for treatment but the toddler was pronounced dead on arrival.
Owen, who was reportedly holding his son in the car and is suspected to have been the gunmen’s target, was grazed on his finger. He was treated and discharged.
Vilbara, who was grazed on her breast, was transferred to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital, where she received stitches before being discharged.
Speaking to reporters at her home in Bagatelle, Diego Martin, later yesterday, the elder Julien denied reports which claimed her daughter’s death was due to her engaging in criminal activity.
“She was not involved in any criminal gang. I am not saying persons in the car were not involved but she was not,” Julien said, as she claimed her daughter was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Julien claimed her family was still shocked by the news.
“I watch it on television all the time but I never thought it would hit home…never in my wildest dreams,” she said.
She described her daughter, a mother of three, as kind, fun-loving and jovial.
“She was a pretty girl, very beautiful. She loved her children,” Julien said.
Lamenting about the country’s crime situation, Julien said too many guns were in the hands of criminals.
“Everybody has a high-powered rifle. Where it coming from, God alone knows,” Julien said.
She also questioned the mindset of the gunmen who attacked the friends, as she suggested they would have known there was a child in the car when they opened fire.
“How are you going home to eat chicken and chips and drink coffee and you know you kill a little child and an innocent woman?” Julien said.
However, Julien claimed she did not blame the police or the Government for the crime situation.
“You could put whatever measures in place, if people want to do madness, they would do madness,” she said.
Julien said she and her relatives got a little comfort from the fact that her daughter got to enjoy the wedding before her death.
“They said she dance and had a ball in the wedding,” she said.
Asked how her six-year-old granddaughter, four-year-old grandson and her daughter’s three-month-old baby reacted to the news of their mother’s death, Julien said she did not have the heart to break the news to them as yet and only told them she was sick and in hospital.
“She (the six-year-old) a little autistic and I don’t want her to get too upset,” she said.
Julien said her older grandchildren’s father took custody of them after hearing the news and she and her other children will take care of Gloster and her daughter’s baby.
In 2007, Gloster was charged alongside some of his relatives and neighbours from La Puerta Avenue, Diego Martin, with the kidnapping and murder of former Xtra Foods chief executive Vindra Naipaul-Coolman.
Within months of him being charged, however, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) opted to discontinue its prosecution of Gloster. His relatives were eventually freed at the conclusion of their trial in 2016, while two neighbours are still facing a retrial.
Sgt Harrypersad of the Region One Homicide Bureau is continuing investigations into the quadruple murder.
Man shot dead
near his home
Meanwhile, homicide detectives are investigating the murder of a Belmont man who was shot dead near his home yesterday.
According to reports, shortly after midday, residents of Belle Eau Road in Belmont reported hearing a volley of gunshots.
When they checked a short while later, they found Cornelius “Prince” Francis lying in a drain at the side of the road. He was pronounced dead on the scene by a District Medical Officer (DMO).
Francis’ attackers are suspected to have used an assault rifle, as 5.56 calibre spent shells were recovered by crime scene investigators.
Francis’ relatives were reportedly on an excursion in south Trinidad when they got the news and rushed back home.
The quadruple murder and Francis’ killing raised the murder count for the year to 487.
