On hearing screams coming from his home, ten-year-old Derrell Wharton ran home only to find his father, 41-year-old Derrick “Muscles” Wharton dead outside his Albert Street, Arouca home on Sunday evening.
The child’s mother,Sherrian Thomas, said she was returning for a children’s concert in the area around 7 pm with her child when she learnt of the shooting.
She told the media at the Forensic Science Centre yesterday that she stopped at a car wash and overheard someone asking whose house was shot up. She added that while walking to her home she and her son heard screaming and the child recognised the voice to be that of his grandmother.
Both Thomas and Wharton’s sister, Carol Wharton, said they had no idea why someone would want to shoot the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation worker.
In an unrelated incident, an 18-year-old St Joseph woman, who was shot in the head close to two months ago, died at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital yesterday. According to police reports Denecia Matamoro was shot while with her friend Renaldo Yeates at Sixth Avenue Barataria on October 16. Police reports indicated that Yeates, 28, of Caiman Road, St Joseph, and Matamoro was standing by Yeates’ car around 8 pm when they were shot at.
Yeates died at the scene. Matamoro was at the ICU in a critical but stable condition having been shot in the head.