An in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to an in­ci­dent last Tues­day in which a busi­ness­man was planassed by a young man who has been iden­ti­fied as Shane Gopeesingh, a son of Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh. The dra­ma oc­curred out­side the Brook­lyn Bar in Wood­brook when Gre­go­ry Wight went to pur­chase dou­bles from a ven­dor on the side­walk. The shock­ing episode was cap­tured by a pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty cam­era and went vi­ral af­ter be­ing post­ed on YouTube.

Putting an end to a week of spec­u­la­tion, Dr Gopeesingh yes­ter­day con­firmed that the per­son in a video is in­deed his son. The in­ci­dent which sur­faced last week on so­cial net­work­ing site You Tube showed a man beat­ing a cus­tomer with a cut­lass. It was re­port­ed that the sus­pect was the son of a se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial. In an in­ter­view with re­porters at St Mary's Col­lege, Gopeesingh was asked whether the at­tack­er in the video was his son.

He hur­ried­ly ad­mit­ted, " Yes, he is my son." How­ev­er, he de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on the mat­ter, say­ing that it was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion and it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate. When po­lice was con­tact­ed short­ly af­ter, they stat­ed that they could not pro­ceed with press­ing charges be­cause Wight, 56, of Diego Mar­tin, had not made a re­port of the at­tack. Wight said though his phys­i­cal in­juries will heal, his men­tal health "has been shot to pieces."

Tim Gopeesingh's son iden­ti­fied as cul­prit in planass at­tack

Speak­ing with the T&T?Guardian yes­ter­day, Wight in­sist­ed that a re­port had been made to the Wood­brook po­lice around 7.40 am the same day. He said the in­juries he suf­fered left him "bare­ly able to dri­ve." He re­vealed that he has not slept longer than one hour at any time since the in­ci­dent. "I have been giv­en sleep­ing pills to help me rest and I am al­so black­ing out at in­ter­vals," he said.

Af­ter a week of si­lence con­cern­ing the young man's iden­ti­ty, de­spite a video ti­tled Planass From Min­is­ter's Son be­ing post­ed on YouTube, Gopeesingh yes­ter­day end­ed all spec­u­la­tion. Re­count­ing the at­tack yes­ter­day, Wight said it stemmed from him ask­ing Shane Gopeesingh to turn off the en­gine of his pick-up as peo­ple were eat­ing dou­bles and the diesel fumes were un­healthy.

Wight said his at­tack­er be­came ag­gres­sive and be­gan curs­ing loud­ly, but that "the trig­ger that sent him for his cut­lass" was Wight's com­ment the he had "come from the gut­ter and would stay there." Wight said he was stuck twice with the cut­lass and made to apol­o­gise. "If I had not stayed qui­et and done ex­act­ly what he told me, I ex­pect­ed to die," he said.

Un­easy now if some­one gets too close to him, Wight said a woman who tried to hug him yes­ter­day was near­ly cuffed down be­cause, "I am ex­treme­ly jumpy and stressed out." He said his fam­i­ly has al­so been af­fect­ed by the in­ci­dent and that his busi­ness was now suf­fer­ing as a re­sult.

Telling the T&T?Guardian that he would no longer be go­ing to the Brook­lyn Bar to pur­chase dou­bles as he was ac­cus­tomed do­ing, Wight joked: "I al­ways knew dou­bles were dan­ger­ous for my health, but I did not know that it was that dan­ger­ous."

Asked if he would be mov­ing ahead with the mat­ter, de­spite the min­is­ter's of­fer of an apol­o­gy, Wight said: "It has been six days since I was bru­talised and four days since the video was shown on tele­vi­sion and yet noth­ing has been done. That boy is free to roam and bru­talise oth­ers." Re­fer­ring to the crime sit­u­a­tion, Wight said this in­ci­dent has on­ly served to re­in­force his wish to mi­grate.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day's week­ly press brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer Sgt Wayne Mys­tar con­firmed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the in­ci­dent had start­ed on Mon­day. Mys­tar said a re­port was made to the Wood­brook po­lice and all leads were be­ing "thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed."