The innocent pay for the guilty. This was the reasoning of relatives of 17-year-old Nickosi Trim at the Forensic Science Centre, St James yesterday as they awaited his autopsy results. Trim’s aunt Marcia Trim told the media her nephew was at home washing his school uniform for the Laventille Technology and Continuing Education Campus, which falls under the National Energy Skills Centre, when he left home to go to a nearby parlour.
Trim, an aspiring mechanic, lived at Upper St Barbs with his two younger siblings and other relatives and went to get a “pack juice and biscuit,” his aunt said. While he was there a car drove by and opened fire on those present, fatally injuring Trim, who died while in surgery yesterday morning, and wounding another man identified only as “Elvis.” Police said around 9 pm on Thursday the occupants of a black Nissan Tiida opened fire on a group of men at the parlour on St Barb’s Road, Laventille.
The two injured men were taken to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital, where Trim died around 3 am yesterday. Trim said her nephew was nicknamed “Rattie” and “Bachac” because of his small stature, and though he was the eldest he was mistaken for the younger brother. His father, Nigel Trim, was inconsolable at the Forensic Science Centre. Marcia Trim said he had to be restrained at the hospital after he tried to jump off a balcony on hearing of his son’s death.
“My family can’t take that,” Marcia Trim said. “His mom died a while back and now this. “He didn’t deserve that. Before he went in the operation (theatre) I watch him and said, ‘I love you, right. You know I love you, right?’ He said, ‘Aunty, yes I know,’ and then we went outside.” Trim added that she saw a white dove land on a tree she was under at the hospital and she took it as an omen. She said she was told to go home only to be told hours later that her first nephew was dead.
“Them fellas have to do better than that, they can’t be killing people children just like that. I am a mother of four and it hurting me deep down in my belly. We have to come together as one and forget about who is this and who is that, because it not making any sense we have to live as one,” Trim said. Another relative said the ongoing Rasta City versus Muslim gang warfare was the cause of Trim’s death.
He was resolute that Trim was “not in nothing,” adding that what goes around comes around and Trim’s killer would not go unscathed. The murder toll, according to a T&T Guardian tally, is now 315, six more than for the corresponding period last year.