Mark Bas­sant

At least four peo­ple were mur­dered and the body of an uniden­ti­fied man found over the last 24 hours as the coun­try marked a bloody Christ­mas Day. The four killings pushed the coun­try’s mur­der count to 522 the sec­ond-high­est ever record­ed af­ter the 550 mur­der count in 2008. It al­so sur­passed last year’s mur­der count of 516.

Hours be­fore, cold-blood­ed crim­i­nals shot and killed PC Nicholas Vic­tor at a cen­tral Su­per­mar­ket on Christ­mas Eve. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Vic­tor, who was at­tached to the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch, was off-du­ty and do­ing pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty du­ties at Rain­bow Su­per­mar­ket in Kel­ly Vil­lage at the time of the in­ci­dent.

Short­ly af­ter 8 pm, he was ap­proached by two gun­men who shot him at point-blank range in the head and up­per body. Cus­tomers in­side the su­per­mar­ket ran for cov­er at the sound of the gun­fire. The armed as­sailants re­lieved Vic­tor of his firearm as he lay dead and fled the scene.

“The in­for­ma­tion we have is that they thought he was a se­cu­ri­ty guard and they were watch­ing him for a while, per­haps to take his firearm, “ a se­nior of­fi­cer ex­plained.

With­in min­utes of the killing, of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) head­ed by Sgt Mark Her­nan­dez to­geth­er with Supt Wayne Mys­tar of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and of­fi­cers of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch and Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force were on the scene. They have since mount­ed a man­hunt for the two sus­pects.

Se­nior po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia Vic­tor on­ly got mar­ried about 11 months ago to a po­lice­woman at­tached to the Port of Spain Di­vi­sion. They lived in an apart­ment at his par­ents’ home at Bhagna Trace, Chase Vil­lage.

In a strong­ly word­ed re­lease, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith con­demned the killing of the po­lice of­fi­cer.

Grif­fith, who vis­it­ed Vic­tor’s fam­i­ly along with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said: “There is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that the sus­pects in this in­ci­dent may have been some of the many pre­vi­ous­ly held by the of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice(TTPS), whilst in the pos­ses­sion of firearms, but were al­lowed to ac­cess bail and get back on­to the streets be­cause cer­tain per­sons in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, in­clud­ing politi­cians and so-called ac­tivists, see it fit that the rights of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to sur­vive in this coun­try. It is dif­fi­cult for the po­lice to be do­ing their job of ar­rest­ing these in­di­vid­u­als with firearms on­ly for them to be giv­en a get out of jail free card to go back on­to the streets.

“When this hap­pens, the crim­i­nals are em­bold­ened to com­mit the crime that they were plan­ning to, which is mur­der be­cause they have le­gal fees to pay and when the mur­der rate in­creas­es, the TTPS is blamed.”

Vic­tor was the third po­lice of­fi­cer mur­dered for the year. Sergeant Roger Williams was shot dead on Char­lotte Street in late No­vem­ber by gun­men who had tar­get­ed a Beetham man who es­caped with in­juries. Cor­po­ral Frank Fox was shot in Pin­to Road Ari­ma on No­vem­ber 23 by armed ban­dits and died last week at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex af­ter bat­tling his in­juries for more than three weeks.

The sec­ond killing al­so hap­pened on Christ­man Eve in Rio Claro when Paul Hen­ry, 68, fell to his death fol­low­ing an ar­gu­ment with a 17-year-old male rel­a­tive at his home.

Po­lice said the ar­gu­ment be­came heat­ed and Hen­ry grabbed a cut­lass and dealt the teenag­er sev­er­al blows. En­raged, the teenag­er pushed Hen­ry over a ve­ran­da in what po­lice is treat­ing as an act of self-de­fence.

The rel­a­tive who lat­er sur­ren­dered to po­lice said Hen­ry fell some six feet over the ve­ran­dah’s bal­cony and died. The 17-year-old sus­pect has been de­tained.

The third killing hap­pened short­ly af­ter 1 am on Christ­mas morn­ing in Phase 7, La Hor­quet­ta, Ari­ma.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they were called to the area af­ter res­i­dents heard loud ex­plo­sions along Tony Govia Av­enue. A 19-year-old, iden­ti­fied as Ja­mali Williams, of Chin Chin Road, Cunupi, was found with gun­shot wounds to his chest. He was rushed to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty and suc­cumbed to his in­juries half an hour lat­er.

Po­lice say that Williams of­ten vis­it­ed the area to meet friends. They have not been able to es­tab­lish a mo­tive for his killing.

Just be­fore 11 am yes­ter­day, a man iden­ti­fied as Michael Her­nan­dez was shot and killed in Diego Mar­tin. Her­nan­dez, al­so known as Micheal Green and Bird, was seat­ed in a white Nis­san Almera car near Hum­ming Bird Cir­cu­lar, Spar­row Dri­ve, Four Roads when he was ap­proached by a gun­man who shot him mul­ti­ple times about the body and fled.

Her­nan­dez was tak­en to the St James Med­ical Fa­cil­i­ty where he was pro­nounced dead.

And just around the time of Her­nan­dez killing yes­ter­day, po­lice were called to Sawmill Av­enue in San Juan near a fu­ner­al home where they found the par­tial­ly de­com­posed body of a man in­side a drain.

Due to the state of the body po­lice said they will have to await the re­sults of an au­top­sy to de­ter­mine the cause of death.