Po­lice say they are brac­ing for an all-out war in the un­der­world af­ter a man was found de­cap­i­tat­ed in the heart of Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day in what they say was a mafia-styled killing.

The uniden­ti­fied man's head was found in a garbage heap along Pall Mall Street, East Dry Riv­er, around 5 am while the rest of him was found stuffed in the trunk of a dam­aged white BMW 1 se­ries about sev­en hours af­ter.The style of killing is sim­i­lar to that of Mex­i­can drug car­tels who be­head their vic­tims and dis­mem­ber their bod­ies to warn oth­ers that they are not to be messed with.

Yes­ter­day's in­ci­dent al­so came a day af­ter of­fi­cials at Trin­mar found a man's body trapped in an off­shore plat­form. South­ern po­lice al­so linked that killing to the drug trade.Late yes­ter­day po­lice said they be­lieved the man was a known Las Lo­mas drug deal­er but they would await con­fir­ma­tion to­day when rel­a­tives turn up to iden­ti­fy the body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James.

At the scene of the dis­cov­ery at up­per Dun­can Street, East Dry Riv­er, head of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt John­ny Abra­ham, said the de­cap­i­ta­tion was clear­ly a mes­sage sent to the in­di­vid­u­als in the un­der­world."I be­lieve it is a strong mes­sage. Who­ev­er did the killing sent this to some un­der­world group telling them that they could lose their men and so on, I be­lieve so," Abra­ham said.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, the man's head was found by Port of Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion work­ers dis­pos­ing of garbage yes­ter­day morn­ing. Res­i­dents said they did not know the iden­ti­ty of the man.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, a cor­po­ra­tion work­er, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said his col­leagues were stunned when the head rolled out on­to co­conut branch­es as they were pick­ing up bags of trash.He said when he was told of the dis­cov­ery he cursed his co-work­ers telling them it was no joke to make. He said when he was shown the head he was in dis­be­lief that it was a hu­man head ini­tial­ly.

He, how­ev­er, thanked God he did not have break­fast, not­ing he was sure to have re­gur­gi­tat­ed any meal af­ter a clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion proved it was a hu­man head, which was "cut clean­ly."As the sirens of po­lice ve­hi­cles blared, es­cort­ing the fu­ner­al agency trans­port­ing the head, chil­dren from the near­by St Hil­da's Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School were heard scream­ing and play­ing.

Po­lice sub­se­quent­ly went in search of the man's body at the Beetham land­fill but came up emp­ty hand­ed.Just af­ter noon, how­ev­er, of­fi­cers were called out again af­ter the man's body was found, wrapped in a blue tar­pau­lin and shoved in the trunk of the car parked out­side the Su­pa Hard­ware at the cor­ner of Dun­can and Prince Streets. The body, with the hands tied be­hind the back, was al­ready bad­ly de­com­posed.

Missed op­por­tu­ni­ty

A near­by busi­ness­man said the car had been there since Tues­day morn­ing and po­lice were called to in­ves­ti­gate but when they came they mere­ly peered in­side and left, he said.Of­fi­cers re­turned lat­er that day with a woman of East In­di­an de­scent. Again they looked through the car, open­ing the doors be­fore leav­ing. The car, which was block­ing the en­trance to an­oth­er busi­ness place, was then pushed aside by res­i­dents, but no one checked in­side the trunk.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the stench of the man's rot­ting flesh brought the re­al­i­sa­tion that some­thing was amiss and again po­lice were called again. This time the trunk of the car was searched and the head­less body was found.Res­i­dents of the near­by "Plan­nings" flocked to the area. Some ac­cused in­ter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ist group ISIS of the killing. Oth­ers won­dered what type of man would chop off an­oth­er's head and re­move it.

Abra­ham lat­er crit­i­cised the re­moval of the car from in front the busi­ness and called on cit­i­zens to work clos­er with po­lice. "What I am say­ing is if every­one does their part we can help T&T be a bet­ter place. If a strange ve­hi­cle is block­ing your en­trance, why would you call some­one to push it away be­fore you call the po­lice?" he asked.

"I am clam­our­ing for cam­eras for the longest while. I don't want a cam­era where if some­thing hap­pen you have to beg some­one to get the footage, I want cam­eras that you can mon­i­tor it to get the video any­time and that some­one is mon­i­tor­ing it all the time so you can get the ac­tion live as it is tak­ing place. What I want too is bet­ter cam­eras."

He said for the year the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion had record­ed 72 mur­ders, in­clud­ing the de­cap­i­tat­ed man. He said po­lice had re­ceived some in­for­ma­tion about the be­head­ing but said he could not di­vulge it.The mur­der toll for the year stood at 357 up to yes­ter­day.