Living by the sword?

THE DEATH of four youths, two of them 15-year-olds, from a hail of police bullets on Monday night is a shocking development in the already disturbing crime situation in the country. While we are aware that the criminals who prey on our society are mostly young people, the four who were engaged in Monday night’s violent episode were really boys, three teenagers and a 20-year-old. By normal circumstances, they should still have been in school, preparing themselves for life in the adult world. Instead, they apparently decided to enter into a life of crime and, as fate would have it, their escapade in Central on Monday night ended in a jolting tragedy.

We believe that the bullet ridden encounter between the four youths and the Police is so serious that it cannot be treated as just another unfortunate incident. The effort to deal with the crime scourge in the country, in fact, may well benefit from an investigation into the circumstances, the social factors, which caused these four boys from Felicity to launch themselves on a criminal career so early in their lives. Their tragic story is one that should send a telling message to every young person in our country, particularly those belonging to homes that are not well-to-do, where financial pressures are more severely felt. Their violent end at the hands of the police reinforces the old but still very effectual maxims that crime does not pay and that those who choose to live by the sword will most likely die by the sword.

One of the four, Prem Narad, 15, was still at school, a Form Two student of Carapichaima Junior Secondary. He and the other three, Kevin Singh, 16; Dennis Roopchand, 20, of Union Village and his next door neighbour Ravi Boodoo, 15, perished in a fusillade of bullets at the end of a police chase at Bank Village, Carapichaima. They were fleeing from a team of Crime Suppression Unit officers who spotted them in the Laurel Medalist taxi they had stolen about an hour before from driver Jairam Ragoo. Hoping to escape the CSU officers, they sped through the red light at St Mary’s Junction in Freeport but collided with a Sentra proceeding south along the Old Southern Main Road. The police vehicle rammed into the back of the stolen car, bringing it to a standstill. According to the officers, they were greeted by gunfire during which one of the occupants in the Medalist attempted to escape on foot. He was fatally shot during the exchange. When they approached the crashed taxi, the police found three dead youths inside. They seized two revolvers and a cutlass from the taxi.

Earlier, the four had hijacked the taxi from Raghoo who was plying the Felicity-Chaguanas route. They took the driver and a female passenger to a nearby cemetery where they were robbed of cash and other items. The driver, who apparently resisted, was chopped on the back, left forearm and fingers. He was bundled into the trunk, driven to the Waterloo Cremation site where he was thrown into the sea. Instead of drowning, however, Raghoo managed to escape by swimming along the shore. When he emerged from the water at the cremation site sometime later, he was fortunate in flagging down a police jeep with PCs Bissoon and McDonald of the Couva CID on patrol. What could possibly have caused these four young persons to do what they did, engaging in carjacking, robbery, wounding and even attempted murder? Had they not been caught, what other crimes would they have committed with a stolen car, two revolvers and a cutlass? According to the police, one of the 15-year-olds had a criminal record and was a suspect in a killing at Felicity one month ago. Those who deal in the sociology of crime fighting should want to know. Perhaps Prof Ramesh Deosaran would want to undertake a case study of this tragedy to help in formulating his national strategies.