Members of the Inter-Agency Task Force speak to residents at Laventille yesterday. INSET: Karim St Aime.

BY GEISHA KOWLESSAR

The shooting death of a teenager by police in Laventille has sparked a renewed sense of outrage by residents.

Nineteen-year-old Karim St Aime was killed by a police bullet around 3 am at Prizgar Lands yesterday.

The teenager’s mother Josiane St Aime, however, believes her son’s death would be another case swept under the carpet.

Karim’s killing occurred two days after Kerry Springer, 18, and Akiel Parris, 26, both of Pump Trace, were shot dead by members of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF). Those killings happened on Saturday.

Karim, who had been employed as a labourer with the Water and Sewerage Authority, was “murdered in cold blood,” his mother claimed.

According to St Aime, her son was returning home after visiting his girlfriend when he was accosted by the police.

She said: “The police saw him coming out from the bushes and when he see them he put his hand up.

“They ask him what he doing there and before he had a chance to answer they shoot him in the chest.”

She said if Karim had been wanted for questioning, then the police should have handcuffed him and carry him to the station.

“He see everybody running so he get frighten and hide in the bush,” St Aime said.

Maintaining she liked “nothing in uniform,” St Aime said after her son was killed, his body was thrown into the tray of a police pick-up which then sped off.

“They treat my son like a real dog. The police did not even tell me where they take his body,” St Aime said.

Police said just before the shooting, they received information that four gunmen were walking through Prizgar Lands.

They said after the shooting they recovered a loaded shot gun and a pistol on the scene.

Josiane St Aime cries while awaiting her son’s autopsy results at the Forensic Science Centre in St James yesterday. PHOTOS: KARLA RAMOO