Schoolboy critical at PoS hospital

Hakeem Cabrera will spend his 15th birthday today warded at Port-of-Spain General Hospital. Hakeem, a Form Two student, was shot in the hip. The bullet exited his buttocks. Up to late yesterday, Hakeem remained warded in critical condition in the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital.

Hakeem’s sister, Sheena Cabrera, has called for justice claiming her brother was shot by the police yesterday morning at Savannah Trace Number One in Bagatelle. She said yesterday morning that her brother was leaving a moko jumbie camp around 12.30 am when he was shot.

“We heard the shots and I called him. He answered the phone and said come and get me. I get shoot,” she said. Sheena said she was accosted by the police when she went to Hakeem, who lay wounded on the ground. She said: “He was in a track lying down and they (the police) were shining a light on the ground and picking up shells from the ground.”

She said her brother was not in any gang-related activity. “He not in anything. He ask me what I getting for his birthday. I told him two lash. I don’t know as yet,” she joked. Diego Martin residents lit debris and garbage at the corner of Bagatelle Road and Savannah Trace Number One.

Riot police and Western Division Task Force officers were called out to control the crowd. Residents said they witnessed the event. They claimed police officers shot Cabrera while he was on his way home. However, public information officer of the Police Service Sgt Wayne Mystar said reports showed otherwise.

“I cannot say it was the police, because that is not the information that I received,” Mystar said. He said the police were responding to a report of a shooting in the area and took Cabrera for medical assistance.