An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Hours af­ter three armed ban­dits broke in­to his Bal­main, Cou­va home and robbed him of a quan­ti­ty of cash and jew­ellery, the el­der­ly vic­tim said he was pleased they were among six peo­ple killed by po­lice dur­ing an al­leged con­fronta­tion around noon yes­ter­day.

Ed­ward Tay­lor, 68, ex­pressed no re­morse over the killings, which took place at a house at Razac Trace, Cal­cut­ta Road No 2, Freeport.

Yes­ter­day’s po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing brought the num­ber of peo­ple killed by law en­force­ment to nine in four days.

Four of the six killed were iden­ti­fied as Kevon St Bernard, al­so called Kevon John; Jo­van Si­mon; Sa­loni Ranghill and Nicholas Cae­sar.

In an in­ter­view with re­porters around 1.30 pm at his home yes­ter­day, trau­ma­tised vic­tim Tay­lor said, “You don’t feel sor­ry for peo­ple like them. As they used to say long time, a thief is a mur­der­er and when they com­ing in your place, they com­ing to kill you, es­pe­cial­ly if they know you.”

He re­called how the home in­va­sion un­fold­ed at 6.30 am, af­ter he was con­front­ed by three armed men as he came out the wash-room.

Tay­lor said the men robbed him of TT$600 in cash, a quan­ti­ty of jew­ellery, in­clud­ing three gold rings, three gold chains and a gold be­ra to­talling over $60,000, his bank card and bank book, and forced him to write down the PIN, be­fore flee­ing in a wait­ing car.

Res­i­dent in Cou­va for more than 30 years, Tay­lor said, “I have no en­e­my with no­body.”

He said he doesn’t drink, smoke or gam­ble and is al­ways home.

Asked about the crime sit­u­a­tion in the area, both Tay­lor and a neigh­bour agreed they were ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing “free.”

On what he would say to po­lice bat­tling the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, Tay­lor praised them, say­ing, “Right now, I would tell them they do­ing a very good job when com­ing to these kinds of things.”

Al­though he ad­mit­ted to feel­ing shak­en by the rob­bery and would be stay­ing with a rel­a­tive for a few days, Tay­lor said he was too used to op­er­at­ing on his own to let crim­i­nals take away his in­de­pen­dence.

Of­fi­cers from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force and Cou­va CID, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Sgts Black­man and Nel­son, re­port­ed­ly re­spond­ed to a re­port by a mem­ber of the pub­lic that the get­away car was spot­ted at a rent­ed house at Razac Trace.

The pri­vate house was re­port­ed­ly rent­ed to two of the sus­pects two years ago, and peo­ple liv­ing close by yes­ter­day said they nev­er had any prob­lems with the men, whom they de­scribed as help­ful.

Guardian Me­dia was told the rental car al­leged­ly used by the sus­pects fol­low­ing the rob­bery at Tay­lor’s house, was cam­ou­flaged in ra­zor-grass at the side of the house.

It was al­leged that as of­fi­cers ar­rived at the prop­er­ty and iden­ti­fied them­selves, they were greet­ed by gun­fire from in­side, lead­ing them to re­turn fire.

The six oc­cu­pants were sub­se­quent­ly found in the house suf­fer­ing from bul­let wounds.

They were tak­en to the Cou­va Health Cen­tre, where they were pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

Po­lice re­port­ed­ly re­cov­ered three firearms and a quan­ti­ty of bank cards in the house.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials said the dis­cov­ery of the cards led to a break­through in a rob­bery ring that had been op­er­at­ing in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion in re­cent months.

A rel­a­tive of Jo­van Si­mon ex­pressed sur­prise and shock over his killing, say­ing he (Si­mon) nev­er need­ed or want­ed for any­thing, as the fam­i­ly was able to pro­vide what­ev­er he de­sired.

The per­son claimed Si­mon was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yes­ter­day’s shoot­ings brought to 35 the num­ber of per­sons killed by the po­lice so far this year, com­pared to 30 for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2023.

This was the third in­ci­dent in re­cent times in which sev­er­al peo­ple were killed in sin­gu­lar po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.

Just on Sun­day, Amir Bis­soon, Jaya Bharath and Joseph Ramjit were killed by po­lice near the Ca­roni Cre­ma­tion Site, af­ter they al­leged­ly shot at of­fi­cers when con­front­ed.

On May 23, Christo­pher Nor­ie­ga, Tevon May­nard, Akeem Pun­nette and Joshua Allen were killed by po­lice dur­ing an al­leged shootout at up­per St John’s Road, St Au­gus­tine.

PCA in­ves­ti­gat­ing two lat­est in­ci­dents

Not­ing the deaths of nine peo­ple at the hands of the po­lice be­tween Sun­day and yes­ter­day, PCA di­rec­tor David West yes­ter­day as­sured they would be vig­or­ous­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing both in­ci­dents.

In a re­lease, West said, “It is too ear­ly to say what tran­spired with these two in­ci­dents. We are in the mid­dle of in­ves­ti­gat­ing the fa­tal shoot­ings in Ca­roni on Au­gust 11. Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter we re­ceived news of the fa­tal shoot­ings in Freeport to­day (yes­ter­day), we dis­patched a team of of­fi­cers to the scene.”

Wit­ness­es to the two shoot­ings in Ca­roni and Freeport can con­tact the PCA at 226-4722; email at in­fo@pca.org.tt; or come in to the PCA of­fice at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain.