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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Relatives call for details after Mayaro police killing

by

Shane Superville
568 days ago
20230825
Kwasi Pegus, who was shot and killed by police after he allegedly shot at officers in Mafeking, Mayaro, on Wednesday.

Kwasi Pegus, who was shot and killed by police after he allegedly shot at officers in Mafeking, Mayaro, on Wednesday.

The rel­a­tives of Kwasi Pe­gus are call­ing for more in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing his killing by po­lice.

Of­fi­cers said Pe­gus, 24, was part of a group of men who fled an aban­doned house on Mafek­ing Branch Trace, off Mafek­ing Road, Ma­yaro, on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

Po­lice claimed that Pe­gus shot at of­fi­cers, who re­turned fire, killing him. A black and sil­ver pis­tol be­lieved to have been used by Pe­gus was found at the scene.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, Pe­gus’ rel­a­tives ques­tioned the ac­cu­ra­cy of the po­lice re­port.

One rel­a­tive, who asked not to be named, said Pe­gus, who is from La Ro­main, told the fam­i­ly that he and a rel­a­tive were vis­it­ing a beach house in Ma­yaro.

An­oth­er rel­a­tive said she spoke with one of Pe­gus’ friends who claimed he was un­armed when the shoot­ing be­gan.

“From what we heard he was stand­ing in the yard, his friend told him to run, he said he wasn’t run­ning be­cause he didn’t have any­thing il­le­gal on him.

“His friend ran and heard some shots.

“The peo­ple around said he was beg­ging for his life,” said the rel­a­tive who added, “I want to see jus­tice for my nephew. I want the truth to come out ex­act­ly what it is hap­pened be­cause I doubt you’re a mad per­son to just walk up to some­one and shoot them with­out ask­ing.”

A po­lice re­port stat­ed the shoot­ing oc­curred around 10 am, but rel­a­tives said Pe­gus re­mained uniden­ti­fied late in­to Wednes­day evening.

She not­ed rel­a­tives called Pe­gus on Tues­day to pick up a doc­u­ment that was de­liv­ered to their home.

At the time, Pe­gus said he was re­lax­ing at the beach house.

“The next thing we know is the moth­er got a phone call at 2 o’clock yes­ter­day that her son was killed,” the rel­a­tive said.

One rel­a­tive said they al­so called for an­swers on why the po­lice vis­it­ed the home where Pe­gus was shot.

She said ini­tial in­for­ma­tion im­plied that the men were in­volved in an as­sault and rob­bery at a su­per­mar­ket, but fur­ther in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed the vis­it may have been part of en­quiries in­to the dis­cov­ery of a quan­ti­ty of co­caine on a beach in Ma­yaro.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, an of­fi­cer in the East­ern Di­vi­sion said the of­fi­cers were with­in their rights to de­fend them­selves. He, how­ev­er, sought to as­sure the fam­i­ly that all po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings were tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer.

He said of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the area on Wednes­day as part of “gen­er­al en­quiries” but could not con­firm if the shoot­ing was about the seizure of co­caine.

“It’s an on­go­ing en­quiry at the mo­ment.”


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