Wallerfield

Investigations are continuing into the death of 16-year-old Aliyah Santoo, who was allegedly shot by a male companion at a house in Wallerfield on Tuesday night.

While the circumstances leading to the teenager’s death were yet to be determined yesterday, preliminary information suggested it may have been an accident.

An 18-year-old Wallerfield man has since been detained in connection with the shooting.

The suspect initially claimed Santoo, a Form Three student of the Guaico Secondary School, was shot after she opened the front door and a gunman stormed the house, opening fire on them.

This account, however, was later disputed by a person who was present at the house.

Medical officials at the Arima Hospital contacted police at 11.40 pm on Tuesday, to report that a teenage girl had been brought in suffering from gunshot wounds.

Santoo was pronounced dead at 11.50 pm whilst undergoing emergency treatment.

In an interview yesterday, Santoo’s mother, Avita Bally, 34, said Santoo had chosen to leave the family home after a fall-out with her stepfather last year over the rules of the home. She said she had moved to her father’s house, where she spent a couple of months before returning to Wallerfield and moving into her aunt’s house which is situated opposite.

Bally said she and her husband were asleep on Tuesday night when they were awakened by a knocking on the bedroom window.

Bailly said one of the persons living next door claimed a gunman had just come to the house and opened fire, hitting Santoo.

Bally said she saw her daughter lying on the ground bleeding from a wound to the right side of the chest and she and her husband rushed her to the hospital.

Santoo died a short while later.

Bally said they were told Santoo had been allegedly liming with a close male relative and the 18-year-old suspect at the house, when they reportedly retired to bed.

She said, “The boy told us they hear a noise and then the door open, and then Lia come out. He say when she come out, they hear a noise and when he watch, she drop on the ground and he see her chest bleeding and he run out by the door where he see a man jump the drain and running that way.”

Guardian Media understands investigators were given a different version of the events after speaking with Santoo’s relative who was present during the incident.

Lawmen were told the teenage suspect had taken an illegal firearm to the house and that Santoo was shot as he was showing it off.

One 9mm spent shell casing was recovered inside the house.

Bally said her daughter, who loved craft-making, had big dreams to travel the world.

Pressed to say what her last words would be to Santoo if she had a chance, Bally said, “I would tell her it is better to have no friends and be by yourself, than to have plenty friends and you can’t trust them.”

She wept openly as she asked, “Because ent it is her friend who do her that?”

Bally acknowledged her daughter’s mouth was “hot.”

“Even now I can see her reaction to the boy pulling out the gun, if that is true. I know she would have been like ‘boy move that thing from me nah, you chupid or wah?’”

She claimed, “This is the same boy I was quarrelling with her for the longest while…telling her, I don’t like this boy.”

As a parent and woman, Bally said, “You does get vibes about certain people, and I never got anything good from him. I was telling her run he from here nah, but she never took me on. So I am a bit disappointed.”

Claiming Santoo grew up in church, she said this changed after she turned 13 and grew rebellious.

She said, “Even so, I suppose that’s what all teenagers go through because they never think that anything can happen to them. As far as they are concerned, they’re basically immortal.”

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