Enterprise activists demand action after boy's murder

Enough is enough.

This was the overarching sentiment shared by frustrated people living and operating in the Enterprise community after the shooting death of nine-year-old Jomol Modeste.

Modeste was shot in the back on October 15 when people in a stolen panel van opened fire near the playing field at African Grounds – located a stone's throw away from Modeste’s Enterprise, Chaguanas home.

Shihan Marva John-Logan, co-founder and executive director of the Ryu Dan Empowerment Foundation which offers a range of academic, sports, mental health and entrepreneurial services and programmes said she was hurt by the increasing murders in Enterprise and implored residents to not be numb when their children were getting gunned down.

Instead, she called on residents to get up and fight the scourge of crime.

“The entire community needs to take responsibility for what is happening. We need to not hold a corner while our children are being gunned down and criminality is flourishing. We the residents need to fix this problem and that could only fix if we come together and find a space where we could talk.”

“It seems like the society get numb and that is a concern for me. We can’t get numb when a life is lost regardless of whose life it is. Any time a life is lost in any community, it throws back the entire society. It is a reflection of what is happening within our families. If we have strong families, our community is going to be better, our country is going to be better but there is a breakdown within the family cycle and within the community itself. No togetherness. Everybody holding their own corner.

“I am in pain and it is hurting me. Enough is enough. Let us find a different way of resolving our issues.”

John-Logan said religious leaders, business owners and other stakeholders operating in Enterprise and environs, need to be proactive instead of reactive in dealing with criminality in the area.

“Where is the outcry from the religious leaders? This is a community with five masjids, a number of churches – whether it is seventh-days, baptists or pentecostal and a number of temples. Where are those leaders? Why you have to wait until something happen? Why they can’t come together before? Let us be proactive instead of reactive.”

“Where are our social leaders in the community? The group leaders, the NGOs, the business people, where are they?”

She also said the government needed to come off their “high horse and come into the community and walk and talk to people, not only around election time.”

John-Logan said she was disappointed Modeste’s murder has halted sporting activities at African Grounds. President of the Secondary Schools Football League Merere Gonzales said on Tuesday all scheduled games at the grounds will be banned for the rest of the 2022 season.

She said such a decision removes an avenue for youths in the area to positively exert their energies and facilitate their holistic development. In addition, she said the business community will also be negatively affected since the football games would usually draw a crowd who would patronise nearby businesses.

“We want our community to be peaceful, we want our community to be liveable and we want our community to be prosperous and give our children the best opportunity to be the best they could be in a safe space.”

Like John-Logan, Enterprise residents Justin Lewis and Ginelle Small-Cummings both lead NGO’s committed to empowering youth in their community through sport and culture. Lewis who is the president of the Dass Trace Youth Empowerment Committee said it was unfortunate it took the life of “little MJ” to remind the community that there is much work to be done.

“Our community is falling apart and recently most individuals continue to live unaware only because it has not reached their door steps. Crime tends to be an issue to only those who feel the pain and today the community feels the pain. The question now is where do we go from here?”

Small-Cummings, president of the Jimroy Wyse Committee, said it is disheartening for her to see what is happening in her community.

“It is really sad to know that we don’t have a heart any more. We are no longer our brother’s keeper and even though it takes a village to raise a child, the elements are now raising the children who are in these gangs.

“He was only nine years and he now start to enjoy life. He could have been the next prime minister.”

Small-Cummings said the increased gang activity in the area was frustrating because it dampened the hard work of community groups committed to empowering Enterprise youth.

“Jim Wyse and Dass Trace work together…we are doing a positive vibes for the youths and trying our best and when they do this, they dampen our work. The community come like our children. The fight is so much, it gives us a strain. What more can we do. Where do we go from here to help these children reach where they want to go?”

A concerned Enterprise resident who did not want to be named said the crime situation in her community has gotten out of control.

"There are no words in the English dictionary to describe what took place, especially with MJ. But I would say man rather darkness more than light, because their deeds are evil. And their hearts are pierced with a hot iron.

"It's definitely out of control."

Mayor: Too many guns on the streets

Chaguanas mayor Faaiq Mohammed urged the Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds to act now to rid the nation’s streets of illegal guns.

“There is an overwhelming volume of illegal guns on the streets of TT, not even regular hand guns, but high-powered machine guns proliferating on the streets. What is being done by the Ministry of National Security to actively stop this?”

“Residents are also calling for a police post to be placed in the area. We need the minister to act now, don't wait for hundreds or thousands to die before implementing this deference.”

Mohammed said when he visited Modeste’s family on Tuesday, he began to cry after speaking to the child’s father.

“The bond between a father and son was brutally disintegrated, they were like two peas in a pod. He would regularly check on him even during school hours and supported his passion of football. We do not know when will be our last day with the people we love. Our youths are being stolen from our country at the hands of these demons.”

“A recreation ground is supposed to be a safe space. Who would have thought that going to play with friends by the savannah would have led to such a merciless tragedy?”

”The death of little Jomol Modeste is something that will remain etched in the minds of many for years to come."

Police: Fight for turf fuelling gang-activity

Second division officer in charge of the Central Division’s community-oriented policing section Sgt Jacey Small said the increase in gang violence in Enterprise stems from an ongoing turf war.

“There's an existing gang problem in the community. There's a fight for turf and dominance and we need the support of the public to root out these elements. Those criminals are destructive and it certainly requires a hard but strategic policing approach that the TTPS is certainly in the process of addressing.”

“A nine-year-old boy don’t deserve this. Whether a man wants to live by the sword or live by the gun and die by the gun, whoever chooses that, that’s on them. But an innocent child playing football should never have to suffer as a result of these criminal elements.”

Small affirmed the police’s commitment to working with the Enterprise community, saying, “The criminal element feel they could just have the community under siege, we will not allow it.”

“We worked so hard over the years…to see now these criminals feel they could come now and have the community under siege. But trust and believe that the police service is committed to working with the Enterprise community.”

Small said the police is in the process of rolling out the Gang Reduction and Community Empowerment (GRACE) programme – a collaborative approach to crime fighting with a focus on community policing and intelligence-led policing in Enterprise.

Though police believe Modeste’s killing was unintentional, they suspect the murders of two men, Marius Guevera, 25 and Tevin Neptune Joseph, 29, who were both gunned down at Freedom Street, Enterprise on October 17, were reprisal killings connected to Modeste’s death.