A GUNMAN entered a house and without warning, shot and killed two of the occupants – one of whom was a pregnant mother of two who was shot while her son was sitting in her lap, on Thursday. Two other young people were also shot but survived.
The gruesome attack occurred around 9.30 pm in a wooden shack at Zone Eight, Mt Zion Road, Arima. Dead are Amy Walcott, 21, who was nine-months pregnant and 16-year-old Roshan Ali, a student of Valencia High School. Ali was a friend of the family who was visiting for a lime at the time. While Walcott died at the scene, Ali succumbed to his injuries while being treated at Arima Hospital.
Wounded in the incident were Walcott's boyfriend Daniel Alibocas, 18, who was shot in the chest and hand as he attempted to flee, and his 13-year-old brother Shamir Bridgemohan was shot in the hand. The brothers were warded at Arima Hospital both in stable condition up to press time.
The Arima killings plus a double-murder in Diego Martin which took place also on Thursday night, brought to nine the number of people murdered in the past week. The murder toll up up to press time on Friday was 571.
A Newsday team visited Mt Zion Road on Friday only to find the street deserted and people generally very reluctant to speak about the mayhem and bloodshed which had taken place hours earlier.
A relative of Alibocas who made clear he did not want to be identified, told Newsday the group was liming at the front of the house before they all decided to go inside. Not too long after, the relatives said, the gunman entered the one-bedroom home and opened fire. He shot Bridgemohan first with the teen being shot through his palm as he raised his hands to try and shield his face from the bullets.
“When Daniel heard the shots, he jumped up and then he was shot in the chest and hand as everybody just started to run,” the relative said.
The relative added that Walcott was then shot even as her young son sat in her lap. The child escaped unhurt even as his mother slumped back in the chair she was sitting on and died. The relative revealed that when police arrived at the scene, they found the child still in the lap of his dead mother.
One of the officers took the child from off his mother's lap and handed him over to another relative as crime scene investigators moved in to process the scene. The schoolboy, who lay on the floor gasping for air, the relative said, was taken away to hospital.
“This area is very dangerous. So even before this happened, you always had to be careful when you're coming and going,” the relative said.
The relative said that Walcott's family asked police if she could have been taken to hospital so surgery could be done to try and save her unborn son's life, but police said since Walcott was already dead at the scene, her body could only be removed on the district medical officer's signed instruction.
The officers also said they were not trained to perform such surgeries even in emergency cases.
The relative said that on Christmas Day, a man was shot near Alibocas's ho
