No love in Laventille

THERE is no love in Laventille. That is what Maureen Dowridge, mother of 39-year-old Carlos Roger Abraham, said yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre in St James. “They are destroying entire families. And when they done they are telling you about one love, but where is the love?

“There is no love in Laventille. You cannot tell me you love your brother and you love your neighbour and you are trying to take them out.” Abraham was among three people shot dead on Friday night when gunmen opened fire on customers at a bar on Old St Joseph Road, Laventille.

Abraham was urinating in a track between the Liberty Bar and the home of another victim of the same shooting, Joshua James, when at about 11 pm, a gunman got out of a heavily tinted car and sprayed a group of limers before getting back in the car and driving off.

Abraham was killed along with 16-year-old James and 39-year-old Curtis Hempburn, who was sitting near the bar when the gunman attacked. Dowridge told Newsday she was in bed when she heard rapid gunfire and jumped out of her bed, thinking of her son, who had been out liming with a friend for his birthday.

She later heard the shooting had left her four-year-old granddaughter without a father. “He has a daughter and a stepdaughter whom he treats like his own. My child never gave me any rudeness. He was respectable. If I had to do something, he would be the one to do it for me. He would take me to clinic, he would be the one to inject my insulin for me. So those gunmen took a lot from me,” Dowridge said.

Relatives told Newsday Abraham was a driver who took children to school and back to their homes. Autopsies on all three victims confirmed they died from gunshot wounds.

Minister of Education Anthony Garcia yesterday offered his condolences to James’s family, friends and teachers. In a media release, Garcia said the ministry had intervened through its Student Support Services Division with counselling for James’s classmates yesterday.

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"No love in Laventille"

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