‘The next thing I am seeing he dead on Facebook’

There is a saying, “Your friends will take you, but they will not bring you back.”

Wendy-Ann Scipio, the mother of 25-year-old Alika Scipio, one of the two people who were killed on Wednesday in a shooting in D’Abadie, knew of this saying all too well. The last time she saw her daughter alive, Alika was going to lime with friends.

Scipio was also among friends on Wednesday night when gunmen intercepted a car in which they were driving, and riddled it with bullets, killing Scipio, a 26-year-old PH driver identified as Timmy Ramgopaul and wounding two others.

Wendy-Ann told reporters yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre (FSC) that she always warned her daughter about her friends, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. The mother even resorted to occupying Alika so that she would be too busy to go out with her friends.

“I always tried to keep her close to me. Every day I would call her and ask her to check me. I would say, ‘I have work for you to do.’ I would have her come by me and cook, clean, season meat. Anything to keep her close to me and away from her friends,” Wendy-Ann said.

All her efforts came to naught, as friends led her daughter to her death.

At about 8.30 pm Scipio was in a car with Ramgopaul, who was the driver, and two teenagers, 15-year-old Karima Abdullah, from Fondes Amandes Road, St Ann’s, and 19-year-old Tremaine Paul from Maloney Gardens.

At Boys Lane, D’Abadie, the car was intercepted by gunmen who shot the vehicle multiple times..

Residents called the police, but when they arrived, what they found could only be described as a bloodbath. Two of the four victims lay on the ground near the car, while the others were still inside. They were all taken to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, but Scipio and the driver died of their wounds.

Abdullah remains in hospital in a critical condition, as she was shot in the head and chest. Paul, who was shot in the legs and abdomen, is warded in a stable condition.

Ramgopaul’s mother, Ghandai Chan, said her son left his Oropune Gardens home to work at about 2 pm.

“The next thing I know I am seeing that he is dead on Facebook,” Chan said.

Chan told Newsday her son had “rowdy ways,” but changed his life when his son was born two years ago. Police have not established a motive for the shooting. They believe the gunmen may have used multiple automatic weapons.

The murder toll for the year stands at 331.