Derek Achong

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams said yes­ter­day that his of­fi­cers will be prob­ing the ex­e­cu­tion-style killing of Dana See­ta­hal, SC, with an "open mind" and will not rule out any an­gles or pos­si­bil­i­ty.He made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he re­fused to be drawn in­to spec­u­la­tion on why See­ta­hal had been tar­get­ed and an­nounced that be­cause of the heinous na­ture of the crime and her sta­tus in so­ci­ety, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was now the num­ber-one pri­or­i­ty for his of­fi­cers.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Williams said: "We want to give the coun­try the as­sur­ance that the TTPS is us­ing all the avail­able re­sources, in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal, to en­sure that we treat with this in­ves­ti­ga­tion as a num­ber-one pri­or­i­ty for the or­gan­i­sa­tion, with the clear in­ten­tion of pur­su­ing it so vig­or­ous­ly that we can bring the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice in the short­est pe­ri­od of time."

Williams not­ed that he had al­ready as­sem­bled a team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors from var­i­ous di­vi­sions, de­part­ments and units to in­ves­ti­gate the mur­der, which left the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty and the wider coun­try in a mixed state of shock, grief and con­fu­sion. News of See­ta­hal's killing was al­so ex­ten­sive­ly re­port­ed­ly across the re­gion, the Unit­ed States, UK and as far as In­dia.Williams de­clined to re­veal the num­ber of of­fi­cers mak­ing up the spe­cial in­ves­tiga­tive team.

"All avail­able re­sources will be as­signed to this in­ves­ti­ga­tion. So if there is a need for 1,000 of­fi­cers to be as­signed and that is what is nec­es­sary, we as­sign 1,000 of­fi­cers," Williams said.Al­though he ad­mit­ted in­ves­ti­ga­tors had re­cov­ered some ev­i­dence on the crime scene, Williams re­peat­ed­ly told me­dia per­son­al that his of­fi­cers had not ruled out any mo­tive for the killing.

CCTV footage

He said in­ves­ti­ga­tors would be re­view­ing CCTV footage from cam­eras at near­by busi­ness­es on the route used by See­ta­hal to as­sist in gath­er­ing clues in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but al­so made a plea for eye­wit­ness­es to come foward."A small group of vi­o­lent crim­i­nals tend to put fear through the en­tire so­ci­ety, crip­pling all of us from act­ing. It is im­por­tant for all of us to stand up for this coun­try and stand up against the crim­i­nals," he said.

He not­ed that Crime Stop­pers had an­nounced a $1 mil­lion re­ward for in­for­ma­tion that may as­sist in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and plead­ed with eye­wit­ness­es to come foward and as­sist.Williams chose not con­firm or de­ny re­ports that spe­cial se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures had been put in place for See­ta­hal's col­leagues in the Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man mur­der tri­al –Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan and Gilbert Pe­ter­son–hours af­ter mur­der. How­ev­er, he as­sured that the po­lice would as­sist with se­cu­ri­ty for all those who re­quired it.

See­ta­hal last par­tic­i­pat­ed in the high-pro­file tri­al of the dozen ac­cused men in that case last Wednes­day, when she com­plet­ed the tes­ti­mo­ny of the busi­ness­woman's hus­band Ren­nie Cool­man.The tri­al, be­fore Jus­tice Mal­colm Holdip, is sched­uled to re­sume this morn­ing, but some sources close to the tri­al ex­pressed doubt that hear­ings would take place this week, as both at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the pros­e­cu­tion and the dozen men were said to have been left in a deep state of mourn­ing af­ter hear­ing the news of the in­ci­dent.

Well planned hit

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, short­ly be­fore mid­night, See­ta­hal left the Ma Pau casi­no car park on French Street be­fore dri­ving on­to Wright­son Road and lat­er turn­ing north on­to Hamil­ton Hold­er Street in Wood­brook.Po­lice said short­ly af­ter she passed the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty on O'Con­nor Street, res­i­dents were star­tled by a vol­ley of gun­shots which was fol­lowed by the sound of screech­ing tyres. The shoot­ing took place with­in sight of See­ta­hal's apart­ment at the One Wood­brook Place com­plex.

By the time res­i­dents con­tact­ed po­lice and ran out­side to check, they found See­ta­hal slumped over the steer­ing wheel of her light blue Volk­swa­gen Touareg. She was pro­nounced dead on the scene by Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer (DMO) Dr Atkin Mootoo and her body was trans­ferred to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James.

Al­though Williams said in­ves­ti­ga­tors were yet to de­ter­mine the ex­act cir­cum­stances of the in­ci­dent, some po­lice sources said they be­lieve it was a "well planned and co-or­di­nat­ed hit" which in­cor­po­rat­ed two ve­hi­cles and a num­ber of par­tic­i­pants. Some ex­pressed the view that it was pos­si­bly com­mit­ted by a team who had spe­cial train­ing, as it was per­formed with "mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion."

First re­spon­ders to the scene said judg­ing from the bul­let holes in the dri­ver's side of the SUV and the fact that it was found in a sta­tion­ary po­si­tion, it was like­ly they used two ve­hi­cles: one which stopped in front of her and an­oth­er which pulled along­side to shoot at her ve­hi­cle.Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 spent 5.56 cal­i­bre shells on the scene. The high-pow­ered am­mu­ni­tion is used in the AR-15 as­sault ri­fle.

Sev­er­al of See­ta­hal's col­leagues joined See­ta­hal's rel­a­tives on the scene and stayed un­til the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing. They in­clud­ed at­tor­neys Lar­ry Lal­la, Lar­ry Williams, and David West, who was train­ing un­der her in her El Do­ra­do Cham­bers, as well as tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Ian Al­leyne. An emo­tion­al reign­ing So­ca Monarch Machel Mon­tano, who was rep­re­sent­ed by See­ta­hal in his as­sault case, was al­so seen cry­ing on the scene.

Po­lice sources said See­ta­hal's SUV was towed to a crime scene lab­o­ra­to­ry in Cu­mu­to, for­mer­ly used by the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt), where bal­lis­tic test­ing will be per­formed in the next cou­ple of weeks. The foren­sic cen­tre was opened yes­ter­day to al­low See­ta­hal's rel­a­tives to iden­ti­fy and view her body.

A pre­lim­i­nary post-mortem per­formed by foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Hughvon Des Vi­gnes re­vealed that See­ta­hal died from shock and haem­or­rhag­ing caused by mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds. Fur­ther tests are sched­uled for this morn­ing to de­ter­mine, among oth­er things, how many gun­shot wounds she sus­tained.Dick's team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors in­clude Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent John Daniel, In­spec­tor Michael Veronique, and Lawrence, all of the Re­gion One Homi­cide Bu­reau.

Fam­i­ly: Help cops­solve her killing

Rel­a­tives of Dana See­ta­hal SC re­fused to com­ment to me­dia per­son­nel as they left the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, around mid­day yes­ter­day.An un­named male rel­a­tive, who stuck his head out of a car win­dow as he drove by, screamed that the fam­i­ly was trau­ma­tised and would com­ment at a lat­er time.In a press state­ment sent yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives con­demned her mur­der.

"Dana was our hero, our men­tor and our con­fi­dante. Her un­time­ly death at the hands of cow­ard­ly mur­der­ers is a tragedy for our fam­i­ly,the na­tion and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem," the state­ment said.In an ear­li­er text mes­sage, See­ta­hal's niece Danielle Fran­cois called on cit­i­zens to as­sist in solv­ing the mur­der."Aun­ty would have been 'damn vex' and would want the per­pe­tra­tors pros­e­cut­ed to the fullest ex­tent of the law," Fran­cois said.

The fu­ner­al arrange­ments are yet to be an­nounced, but the T&T Guardian was told rel­a­tives have set a ten­ta­tive date of Thurs­day at the Tu­na­puna Pres­by­ter­ian Church.