Double murder in Tarodale

They opened fire hitting 17-yearold Jabari Ettienne and 35-year-old Wendel Pierre. Both are now dead.

Family members said to Newsday yesterday that Ettienne and Pierre were liming at the side of a neighbour’s house with several other people up until 2am. The steps and patch of grass at the side of the neighbour’s house was a daily liming spot for young people in the area. None of them expected the night to end in bloodshed.

“We had just finished watching TV and was about to go to bed when we heard the first shots,” said Ettienne’s 23-year-old sister Akela Ettienne. Akela, who was at home with her mother and other siblings one street away from where her brother was liming, said the first set of gunshots sounded as if they came from “machine guns.” “Then I heard the last two shots,” said Akela who believes they came from a different gun. “After a little while, he just start banging down the door. When we opened it, he stumbled and collapsed on the ground and told us to call an ambulance.” With the help of a neighbour, Akela and her mother rushed Ettienne to the San Fernando General Hospital as he bled from his chest and arm. The bullets, said his sister, went straight through him. He died while undergoing emergency surgery.

Akela said the gunmen chased after her scampering brother and only shot him when he reached the foot of their own hill. The fact that he was chased led some police to believe he was a target of the gunmen, but Ettiene’s grieving mother Karen Baptiste-Ettienne does not believe that was possible.

“He was not a troublesome child at all,” she said. “He is always at home and the furthest place he would go is by that same house and look what happened now. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Meanwhile, as Ettienne was being rushed to the hospital, Pierre was lying on the ground in the neighbour’s yard, bleeding from his neck and his foot as his family awaited the arrival of the ambulance.

He died at the scene.

Unlike Ettienne, Pierre no longer lived in Tarodale. His brother Henry Pierre said he lived in Todds Road, Chaguanas and had only visited Tarodale to do a private job for another one of their brothers. Henry said after doing the job, Pierre dropped money off for his 13-yearold daughter in Marabella before returning to Tarodale to lime.

“I don’t want anybody saying my brother was a bad person,” Henry said. “He wasn’t. He was a good man, my last brother, and now he gone and leave two children with one on the way.” Several men who were at the lime yesterday morning said the gunmen approached them casually, dressed in all black and wearing masks. There were no arrests up to press time, but Ste Madeleine and Homicide Bureau Region III police are continuing investigations.