Twelve-gun salute for fallen URP foreman

A meeting of senior heads of the Western Division Police had to be hastily called out yesterday after receiving reports of mass shootings at Cemetery Street in Diego Martin. Concerned with the number of murders in the area over the last few days, police rushed to the scene only to hear that the gunshots, from colleagues, were in honour of Unemployment Relief Programme foreman Arnold Abraham, alias “Wolfy.”

The funeral for Abraham, 32, who was gunned down on Wednesday morning at the corner of Covigne Road and Diego Martin Main Road, was stopped temporarily as comrades decided to honour him with a 12-gun salute, normally accorded to military and paramilitary officers. When police eventually reached the scene, the gunmen had fled. “This is wrong, this is terrible, it is no laughing matter. Something has to be done about those guns. Imagine Wolfy’s friends sending him off with a gun salute. That is madness,” exclaimed a senior officer.