Man gunned down at birthday lime

Learie “Lay Lay” Pierre, 24, died from gunshots to his head and chest, while Darron Pierre (no relation) and Keron Williams were wounded.

The three men were liming with more than 40 people on Friday night in the yard of Lenore “Bing” Hospedales, 57, just behind Edric Connor Park in Pierreville, Mayaro. Hospedales was hosting a joint celebration for her birthday in April and the May birthdays of her 25-year-old daughter, and her sister.

Hospedales told Sunday Newsday yesterday afternoon that she had hosted similar parties for the last four years, but this was the first time she ever put up a tent. “I am never renting a tent again,” she said.

“This lime start around three o’clock yesterday (Friday) and is only around two o’clock this morning all this madness happen.

“This doesn’t happen in Mayaro. Why they had to come and kill Lay Lay in Bing yard for (sic)? Lay Lay never do anybody nothing!” “I was just walking back to the front of the house because the last pot of crab and dumpling had just finished cooking, and then I just hear like a scatter of bullets.

“It wasn’t one-one bullet they shoot, you know. It was like firecrackers.

I tell myself that had to be a nines.” Hospedales said Darron was walking beside her after they collected their plates of food.

“I just hear him scream out, ‘oh gosh! I pick up! I pick up!’ and he hop to the side of the house.” Hospedales said when she finally made it to the front of the house, “Lay Lay” was lying flat on the ground.

“And all I saw was blood. Plenty plenty blood. I try to tell people to pick him up and let us carry him to the hospital, but nobody was taking me on. Everybody just run away.” Hospedales, who lives less than two minutes away from the Mayaro Police Station, said, “And the police – I see their flashing lights passing in the road whole night but when we call them they take an hour and a half to come.” Police say Pierre was pronounced dead at the Mayaro District Hospital.

Darron has since been discharged from the hospital, but Sunday Newsday understands that Williams, who was struck in his side, was taken to Sangre Grande Hospital where he is in stable condition.

Police said Pierre was known for being “miserable” in the community as he was an outpatient of St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital.

He was also arrested for two drug-related offences, one of which was dismissed in February while the other is still before the court.

Pierre’s family were in shock yesterday.

“How we go feel again, boy?” asked Pierre’s sister, Kizzy Pierre.

“My brother gone, but we have to go on.

Whatever happens in life, life goes on and we have to go on too.” Kizzy said Pierre was a mason and was the only one of her brothers who helped look after her children and those of her sisters.

His girlfriend, she said, is two-months pregnant.