Two tragic and untimely deaths last week underscore the precarity nationals face daily as they live in trepidation among criminals in Trinidad and Tobago. While this insecurity is overwhelming for nationals back home, it is also a warning to the many of us here in the GTA who vacation and do business in our homeland – that practising an ounce of vigilance could mean prevention of an untimely and tragic loss of life.
We mourn the tragic deaths last week of Stephen Andrew Gonsalves Jnr, and Bissoondaye Seemungal. Gonsalves was shot in the head while taking refresher driving lessons in northern Trinidad; he died days later at the Port-of-Spain hospital. According to police, Gonsalves was with his driving instructor when both men were hit by stray bullets; the latter has survived so far. Both men were not the direct victims of a crime, but unfortunately came in the line of fire from a weapon in the wanton hands of a criminal.
Similarly coincidental and tragic circumstances led to Seemungal’s untimely death. According to the reports, Seemungal was watching television with family members on the night of September 16 when gunshots were heard in her north Trinidad neighbourhood. She then complained of a pain in her back; upon checking, relatives discovered a gunshot wound. Police later discovered a hole in the wooden front door caused by a stray bullet. Last week Seemungal died at the Port-of-Spain hospital, the autopsy concluding death due to a gunshot wound.
The deaths of Gonsalves and Seemungal are even more traumatising to nationals back home, and to us abroad, since both victims were not the direct targets of criminals, but were killed while innocently going about their daily lives. They were neither confronted, nor directly attacked, by criminals. That they lost their lives in such indirect ways would have been the last thing expected. Their sudden, painful, and untimely deaths are chilling and horrific.
It helps just a little that the humanity expressed by Trinidad and Tobago’s newly-appointed Commissioner of Police, Gary Griffith, put a human face to the sorrow and suffering being felt with the loss of Gonsalves’ life – he was 27, and just starting out on a possible policing career.
Said Griffith: “I think it is rather unfortunate that with the death of a young man people are speaking about statistics. A young man is dead, the family is traumatised, and I see him as much more than just a statistic.” At the time, Griffith was responding to the growing numbers in the yearly murder toll in Trinidad and Tobago climbing upward from 400 persons killed.
However, it is difficult to not conflate the growing list of absent, human faces with the escalating numbers of lives lost daily to murder. According to figures from the Crime and Problem Analysis branch, in April, May, June, and July of this year, murders increased every month from 17 to 46 percent when compared to the same months during 2017.
Then there came a fall in the numbers of persons killed during August and September, 2018, compared to the same months during 2017: 48 murders in September, 2017, and 35 deaths up to late last week. In August, 2017, there were 43 murders, while during August, 2018, 35 persons lost their lives.
An assessment of the historical, annual figures is no doubt as distressful to nationals back home, for the many of us abroad with relatives and friends in the homeland, and hopefully causing sleepless nights for the newly-minted Commissioner of Police. In 2013, 408 persons were murdered; 403 in 2014; 410 in 2015; 463 in 2016; 494 in 2017, and so far in 2018, 401 dead – with the count continuing to climb.
The foregoing and disturbing figures should also drive Griffith to work hard at his new commission: since taking office, 56 persons were murdered, among them Gonsalves and Seemungal.