Articles - Two more die in Grass Street! Written By: Toni Nicholas

Grass Street, an area of Castries, which is surrounded by Chaussee Road, Marchand and Leslie Land, and which has become synonymous with violent crimes over the years, has erupted once again. This, after a peace initiative launched by the representative of Castries Central Richard Frederick and a basketball court and other projects funded by the Taiwanese Government. Friday October 2, 2009, the air in Grass Street became polluted with the booming sounds of bullets yet again, this time two individuals
are dead.

According to eyewitness accounts between 9:30am and 9:45am at least one masked individual came from around the corner in the area and started firing upon several individuals. In the end two men received multiple gun shot wounds and they were
both rushed to the hospital one by the fire service appliance vehicle. However, both men were both pronounced dead upon arrival at Victoria Hospital. Dead as a result of the Friday morning shooting is David Alexander age 30 of Ciceron and Frank Edwin 47 of Castries. This brings the homicide rate to 32 for the year making it an average of three homicides per month so far for 2009.

The busy Chaussee road which adjoins Grass Street was cordoned off by armed police and investigators who arrived on the crime scene around 9:50. Reporters were hard pressed to get any information from tightlipped Grass Street residents some of whom seemed visibly disturbed and shaken by this latest incident.

At about 11am national security minister Guy Mayers and Richard Frederick both arrived on the scene, for a preliminary account from police and residents.

This is what Guy Mayers had to say about what is happening in the city: “It is very disturbing. As you know there has been a number of shootings in the city over the last couple of weeks and just today I was disturbed from a meeting I was holding to be told that there was another shooting in the area and the preliminary reports are that two persons are dead as a result of the shooting. The police as you notice are on the scene carrying out their investigations and I expect to get a report from them at lunch time today. About 1 o’clock I will be meeting with them to review the situation and decide upon a course of action. Obviously the police will be implementing whatever strategies they have to implement but it is the ministry’s responsibility from a policy point of view to give them the support that is required. We are very, very disturbed that young men are continuing to eliminate each other and we have to try to find out what is going on.

“Why are the young men continuing to do this and why are they getting so brazen that in the middle of the day that they can walk into an area and just open fire? This has to be brought under control so I am imploring the police to do what they have to do whatever is in their power, to bring some measure of control to that kind of activity in the city.”

The STAR asked Mayers about measures which had been put in place since the last gangland style shooting in the area which left one dead at Grass Street and two at nearby Leslie Land. “As the minister I cannot speak on that it is for the Commissioner of Police to address what strategies have been put in lace,” Mayers said. Finally we asked him what he would like to see happen in the city.

“As a minister what would like to see? I would like to see the police take control of the city. I would like to see the shootings stop and peace and tranquility brought back to city and I would like the police to take control of things using whatever means in their power to do so.”

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