Rhon­dor Dowlat

A wound­ed Matthew "Smeagol" Sim­mons took jus­tice in­to his own hands on Thurs­day, when he wres­tled with his killer and man­aged to shoot him with his own gun, an eye­wit­ness told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

The eye­wit­ness, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said Sim­mons was in a taxi on his way home when the car was blocked by an­oth­er ve­hi­cle–a white AD wag­on.

"As Smeagol see the car pull up and the masked man come out, he jumped out of the taxi and ran up to him. Smegol was shot but he still ran up to the masked gun­man and be­gan fight­ing with him," the eye­wit­ness said.

"He man­aged to reach for the gun and shot the killer with his own gun. The masked man dropped down right on the road and as Smegol at­tempt­ed to walk away he drop down on the pave­ment where he died. The man get his own jus­tice yes, be­cause the po­lice don't give none."

The masked gun­man was lat­er iden­ti­fied as Os­wald Bai­ley.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day, Sim­mons' sis­ter, Ja­halia, said she heard the same ac­count giv­en by the eye­wit­ness and added that she be­lieved peo­ple want­ed her broth­er dead a long time ago. She said she be­lieved her broth­er was killed be­cause he was placed in the lead­er­ship of a gang be­fore oth­ers who were from the Bel­mont area.

"First of all, my broth­er grew up in a very good home and it is just he fell in the wrong hands of the wrong peo­ple. There was a spilt in the gang he was in and be­cause he was close to one of the se­nior mem­bers he was placed in the lead­er­ship po­si­tion. I think he was not liked be­cause of the fact that he was orig­i­nal­ly from Mor­vant," Ja­halia said.

She said her broth­er was on his way home from mak­ing an ap­pear­ance at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court ear­li­er that day.

"They al­ways tried to get him ar­rest­ed for some­thing and they had ar­rest­ed him for steal­ing elec­tric­i­ty so he had to go to court. So like he was seen in the court ear­li­er that day by the same peo­ple who want­ed him dead too, so they just planned what they were go­ing to do," Ja­halia said. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.