Teen murdered on way to grandma's

A SIXTEEN-year-old boy, armed only with a cell phone, bread and a tin of sausage, was brutally murdered as he made his way to his grandmother's home for dinner on Friday night.

Akil Phillips had, minutes earlier, closed up shop near his Rebecca Trace, Block 22, Laventille, home and was headed to grandma’s house when he was attacked, robbed of his Samsung J5 and killed. Police said the shooting took place around 10.15 pm. At 10.23 pm he was pronounced dead on arrival at the Port of Spain General Hospital after he was brought there by a relative.

Sunday Newsday visited his home yesterday and spoke with his grandmother Cynthia Vaughns.

Vaughns said her grandson, at one time, wanted to be a fireman. He was a football lover and a form three pupil at St Anthony’s College. When he was shot, he was returning home with his dinner – bread and a tin of Vienna sausage. His killers took his phone. The dogs took his dinner.

Standing in the spot her grandson was shot, Vaughns said: “It doesn’t make sense to me. If you wanted his phone because he had his phone with him. The phone is nowhere to be found. He didn’t get the phone just like that. He worked with the workmen that constructed my house and I paid him.

"I told him, 'If you want a phone you have to work for it. I am not giving you anything free.'

"He come, he work, he get pay, and his mother gave him the other half to buy the phone.”

Vaughns said it was her duty to care for Phillips while his parents sold burgers not too far from their home. Phillips sold in the family’s parlour just in front of his grandmother’s newly constructed home. Behind that is his parents home and next to it is the home he would normally sleep in on weekends while his parents were flipping burgers. Phillips, after selling in the parlour, went to his grandmother’s home but did not want to eat the bread and cheese offered. He returned to the parlour, got his choice dinner and was less than six feet away from his grandmother’s house when he was approached, shot, robbed and left to die.

“In December when other children at home I take him to work with me at Rib House. He is not a child who home. So as long as he home on vacation he will look for something to do. I still can’t figure it out why do you want to kill someone who done nothing to you. He have one or two friends in the area. I can’t figure out who will want to kill my grandson,” Vaughns said.

In April last year, another Laventille teen was murdered just outside his home. His killing, to date, remains unsolved. The deceased in that killing was Kareem Forde, 16, a fourth form pupil at South East Port of Spain Secondary School. He was shot while standing at the back of his Plaisance Terrace home, trying to get a better WiFi connection from a neighbour just before midday on April 13. He died at the Port of Spain General Hospital around 5 am the following day. His killing, police said then, was linked to the Rasta City and Muslim war and he was shot for existing in “enemy territory.”

Phillips wasn't the only person killed on Friday. According to police, Kenton Jackson, 25, was found murdered at Piarco Old Road, Maloney. Jackson of Redhill, D'Abadie was found by residents around 5.15 pm. They told police they had earlier heard gunshots and found his body. Police have not determined a motive for his killing.