The moth­er of Po­lice Con­sta­ble Ja­son Thomas, the of­fi­cer who was killed by car­jack­ers on Mon­day, said she begged him not to join the ser­vice.

She said, too, she had a pre­mo­ni­tion about her son's death. An emo­tion­al Grace Thomas spoke in an in­ter­view at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day, mo­ments af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing her son's body. Three young men–aged 16, 18, and 20–held short­ly af­ter the killing, re­mained un­der in­ter­ro­ga­tion up to late yes­ter­day. Thomas, 37, who lived at Cashew Gar­dens, Long­denville, and had been as­signed to the Cou­va/ Tabaquite/Tal­paro Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice, was at­tacked by three rob­bers pos­ing as pas­sen­gers. They tried to steal his for­eign used Almera which he was ply­ing for hire from Ch­agua­nas to Curepe. Thomas, who was off du­ty, tried to es­cape with the car key but was shot by the gun­men who aban­doned the car in traf­fic.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 8 pm at the in­ter­sec­tion of Churchill-Roo­sevelt and Uri­ah But­ler High­ways. The rob­bers' at­tempt to es­cape was short-lived as a group of sol­diers, who were oc­cu­pants of a car be­hind the vic­tim's car, saw what had hap­pened and chased af­ter the car­jack­ers. The sol­diers held two of the sus­pects near Nes­tle, while the po­lice de­tained an­oth­er near the Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mount Hope, short­ly af­ter­wards. "I begged him not to join...Off du­ty, they (po­lice) have noth­ing to pro­tect them," she said. Thomas said she was against her son be­com­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer. "They pro­tect and serve and these peo­ple (crim­i­nals) car­ry­ing guns," she said.

"Like they stop killing or­di­nary peo­ple now and killing peo­ple in the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. "Just now there will be no­body left. One minute it is a pris­ons of­fi­cer and the next it is a po­lice of­fi­cer." Thomas said when her son start­ed to ply the car for hire, she ad­vised him against it. "I al­ways told him about it and I was al­ways afraid these last few days," she said. "I was get­ting a lot of bad vibes. When I told him (Ja­son) he said he has to mind his wife and chil­dren." On her re­cent pre­mo­ni­tion, she said: I saw him (Ja­son) ly­ing down dead and I said you mean they go kill my son. When I heard the knock on my door, I asked which one of my sons did they kill."