Enough is enough.

This was the overarching sentiment shared by frustrated people living and operating in the Enterprise community after the shooting death of nine-year-old Jomol Modeste.

Modeste was shot in the back on October 15 when people in a stolen panel van opened fire near the playing field at African Grounds – located a stone's throw away from Modeste’s Enterprise, Chaguanas home.

Shihan Marva John-Logan, co-founder and executive director of the Ryu Dan Empowerment Foundation which offers a range of academic, sports, mental health and entrepreneurial services and programmes said she was hurt by the increasing murders in Enterprise and implored residents to not be numb when their children were getting gunned down.

Instead, she called on residents to get up and fight the scourge of crime.

“The entire community needs to take responsibility for what is happening. We need to not hold a corner while our children are being gunned down and criminality is flourishing. We the residents need to fix this problem and that could only fix if we come together and find a space where we could talk.”

“It seems like the society get numb and that is a concern for me. We can’t get numb when a life is lost regardless of whose life it is. Any time a life is lost in any community, it throws back the entire society. It is a reflection of what is happening within our families. If we have strong families, our community is going to be better, our country is going to be better but there is a breakdown within the family cycle and within the community itself. No togetherness. Everybody holding their own corner.

[caption id="attachment_982150" align="alignnone" width="676"] Schoolboy Jamal Modeste. -[/caption]

“I am in pain and it is hurting me. Enough is enough. Let us find a different way of resolving our issues.”

John-Logan said religious leaders, business owners and other stakeholders operating in Enterprise and environs, need to be proactive instead of reactive in dealing with criminality in the area.

“Where is the outcry from the religious leaders? This is a community with five masjids, a number of churches – whether it is seventh-days, baptists or pentecostal and a number of temples. Where are those leaders? Why you have to wait until something happen? Why they can’t come together before? Let us be proactive instead of reactive.”

“Where are our social leaders in the community? The group leaders, the NGOs, the business people, where are they?”

She also said the government needed to come off their “high horse and come into the community and walk and talk to people, not only around election time.”

John-Logan said she was disappointed Modeste’s murder has halted sporting activities at African Grounds. President of the Secondary Schools Football League Merere Gonzales said on Tuesday all scheduled games at the grounds will be banned for the rest of the 2022 season.

She said such a decision removes an avenue for youths in the area to positively exert their energies and facilitate their holistic development. I