The mur­der of an autis­tic teenag­er in Bar­rack­pore, the killing of a nurse in Carlsen Field, and the brazen as­sas­si­na­tion out­side Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port have all cap­tured the at­ten­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who has pledged a com­bi­na­tion of hard­line tac­tics and so­cial in­ter­ven­tions to com­bat the crime wave grip­ping Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ap­pear­ing on Guardian Me­dia’s Slam 100.5FM with An­cil “Blaze” Isaac and Myles Grant, Young ac­knowl­edged that crime re­mains one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges but reaf­firmed his gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to ad­dress­ing it com­pre­hen­sive­ly.

Young specif­i­cal­ly ref­er­enced the mur­der of 15-year-old Ma­li­ni Per­sad, a Form Two stu­dent of AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege in Bar­rack­pore. She was last seen by her fam­i­ly on April 13. Four days lat­er, po­lice dis­cov­ered what was be­lieved to be her de­com­pos­ing body in a forest­ed area at KPA Trace, off GP Road. The pri­ma­ry sus­pect, 52-year-old Vin­od Avinash Kothai, re­port­ed­ly con­fessed to her mur­der and sub­se­quent­ly end­ed his life in a cell at the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion on April 19.