Murder victim’s relative: Take ‘draconian’ measures against gangs

GREGORY MC BURNIE and JOSETTE DEONANAN

A relative of a 17-year-old boy who was killed in Malick, Barataria, says it is time the authorities take extreme measures to deal with gangs.

Around 10.35 pm on Wednesday, D’andre Hercules was sitting in the gallery of his home on Upper Sixth Avenue with a female relative when a man in dark clothing and a mask approached them.

The man pointed a gun at them and told them not to move. The female relative ran off, and neighbors reported hearing gunshots moments later.

Hercules’s family then found him on the ground in the gallery with gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead on the scene by a district medical officer.

Speaking with the media at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, his family was inconsolable, as they said they could not understand why he had been targeted.

The relative said Hercules was his mother’s only child and was never involved in any gang activity.

He said Hercules, who was studying to become a certified electrician, was skilled with his hands and already capable of fixing air conditioners and refrigerators.

The family is devastated, as they say Hercules was living his dream and had his whole life ahead of him.

“After he done qualify in that, the whole world open for him. He could go and join the service.” The relative said gang warfare in Malick was spiraling out of control.

“You have a man warring a man four streets away. That don’t make sense…They killing one another when they swing in the area and catch whoever outside. When is that going to stop?” He said the gang leaders in the area were using the youth as pawns.

“They getting their foot-soldiers, the youths and them who ain’t know better (to commit crimes). And of course it have the big head who organizing everything, and they don’t know he using them, because the drugs and everything getting consumed right there in the area, so he turning over (a profit).”

He said the two known gangs in the area are supposed to be under a truce, but it is not being respected.

“It have no integrity in that (truce). How could you get integrity from them kind of people? They have no integrity, so it’s no peace.”

He said anyone could be a victim of gang warfare in the area: “Whoever they catch outside – your daughter, your son, whoever outside when they pass.” If crime continued on this trajectory, he said, residents of Malick will soon have to abandon their homes.

“Imagine, them can’t come out of their place. You could go in the shop and get killed…D’andre got killed sitting in his own gallery. That’s how it is, crazy!” The relative had no hope that the authorities could get gangs, crime, and the murder rate under control.

“The government can’t help it. The most they can do is manage crime. They can’t stamp it out. The horse already leave the stables. The horse gone long time, and they now trying to pull it back.”

He said he believed it was time for the authorities to look at more draconian measures targeting gangs.

“Sometimes people had to give up some of their liberties for things to get right…you have to pull it back community by community, street by street.”

He pointed to El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele embarked on a crime plan which targets gangs and has built a 40,000-capacity mega-prison to house gang members.

Although critics have accused Bukele’s administration of flouting prisoners’ rights, he remains popular and was re-elected in February with more than 80 per cent of the votes.

El Salvador is now considered one of the safest countries in the western hemisphere after its murder toll dropped from 2,398 in 2019 to 154 in 2023.

The relative told the media, “You have to go hard. Build a maximum-security (prison). Build thing to put them, and then rounds them up. It will have collateral damage – but it having collateral damage now.” “A few will be mixed up and that will be sad…But look at what happening now. “That gang thing is madness. We don’t need that. We need love and it doesn’t have that.”