By KARL E CUPID Tobago Bureau Wednesday, December 9 2009

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CRIME SCENE: An abandoned house used as a gambling den. INSET: Jude Alleyne, 18, of Mount St George who was shot dead....

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A teenager was killed and his cousin wounded when gunmen opened fire with what is believed to be a semi-automatic weapon at an illegal gambling den at Mt St George, near Scarborough, at about midnight on Monday. Dead is 18-year-old Jude “Stooky” Alleyne, of Mt St George, who succumbed to his injuries shortly afterwards at the Scarborough Hospital.

He was reportedly shot once in the chest. “What a Christmas gift!” his favourite cousin Diandra Murray, 23, lamented when Newsday visited the family home yesterday. “The innocent pay... and we need justice to be found”, she asserted.

Meantime, Alleyne’s mother Venus Charles, 48, declared, “Oh, I never believe something like that would have happened in a little village like Mt St George so well-knit. It’s just amazing; I can’t believe that people could be so wicked to one another... just come in and shoot them down like that. I hope that the police bring these perpetrators to justice. Oh Lord!” she lamented. “It could have been two funerals”.

Meanwhile, Stephen Lewis, 17, a first cousin of the deceased, also of Mt St George, was up to yesterday afternoon warded at the Scarborough Hospital in stable condition. He was reportedly shot in the buttocks and thigh and “grazed” on the foot in the hail of rapid gunfire which erupted at an old abandoned building frequently used as a gambling den at Georgefield Junction in Mt St George.

“He is okay, he is out of danger; they said he is stable”, his mother Cheryl Charles confirmed, having just returned from the hospital.

Both Lewis and Alleyne were enrolled in the HYPE training programme at Patience Hill, relatives said.

Homicide detectives are continuing investigations.