PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – Eight people were murdered during the long Christmas weekend with Police Commissioner Dwayne Gibbs saying that his wish for 2012 is for people to resort to other means of solving their differences.
Police said the eight murders occurred in areas across the country, with two of the victims, including a woman being stabbed and the other six shot in separate incidents.
The law enforcement officials said that many of the killings committed over the past two weeks were as a result of conflict between persons.
“We are concerned that within the last two weeks we have seen a marginal increase in homicides. We are investigating every incident and I could tell you that several of them are expected to be completed within the earliest possible time.
“I want to assure the public that we are doing all in our power to ensure their safety and security. We also want to thank them for calling in and providing us with information in solving homicides and crimes and urge them to continue doing so,” said Deputy Commissioner in charge of Anti-Crime, Operations, Mervyn Richardson, adding “as we move into the pre-Carnival season, there would be an even greater police visibility throughout the country”.
Gibbs told the Express newspaper that his wish for 2012 “is to have crime way down in the sense that we see people trying to work together and not solving their differences by killing each other and for the country to flourish economically and politically”.
So far 350 people have been murdered here this year. Last year 467 people were killed in Trinidad and Tobago. (CMC)
