Mere hours be­fore Pa­lo Seco fa­ther Ri­cal­do "DJ Pap­py" Sanchez was sup­posed to tes­ti­fy in a three-year-old mur­der tri­al at the Siparia Mag­is­trates Court, Petrotrin work­ers stum­bled up­on his corpse in a San­ta Flo­ra field road.Af­ter he was re­port­ed miss­ing on Sun­day, po­lice be­lieve the 51-year-old fa­ther from Mitchell Trace, Los Charos, was tak­en to the lone­ly Skin­ner Trace Ex­ten­tion on Sun­day morn­ing and killed with a sin­gle shot to the head. The mur­der oc­curred just two days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to help her win the war against crime by pro­vid­ing po­lice with in­for­ma­tion.Dis­traught rel­a­tives said Gov­ern­ment had failed S�nchez, who, de­spite count­less death threats, was go­ing to give ev­i­dence in the case in which Fer­min Carrabai is ac­cused of mur­der­ing 30-year-old Kwasi "Pres­i­dent" Chakum­ba-Mu­ral­do on De­cem­ber 28, 2010.

The case was pro­ceed­ing by way of pa­per com­mit­tal and Sanchez's state­ment had al­ready been ten­dered. He had been sum­moned to ap­pear in the Siparia First Court to be cross-ex­am­ined by de­fence coun­sel Earl James.A rel­a­tive, who did not want her name used, said: "He did not de­serve this kind of death be­cause he was try­ing to do the right thing."Prob­a­bly he was the on­ly per­son will­ing to stand up and tes­ti­fy against what is hap­pen­ing in Trinidad right now and they kill him for that."Even more dis­heart­en­ing, she said, all three men were once friends and played as chil­dren in Los Charos but af­ter wit­ness­ing Chakum­ba-Mu­ral­do's death, Sanchez want­ed to get jus­tice for his mur­dered friend."The State failed him in a sense but what I am say­ing is the peo­ple al­so failed him. The peo­ple in the neigh­bour­hood failed him more than the State be­cause when you think about it, it is the peo­ple around who knew what was go­ing on."What the Gov­ern­ment can do is to of­fer the peo­ple who are will­ing to come for­ward pro­tec­tion. They need to take it up in­stant­ly. "If a man said he wit­nessed a mur­der, take him one time and keep him away from the neigh­bour­hood be­cause we need this case to get solved.Al­though no sus­pects have been ar­rest­ed, Sanchez's rel­a­tive said every­one al­ready knew why he was killed. She said the last time she spoke to Sanchez was on Fri­day, when he went to the court to find out when he was sup­posed to tes­ti­fy."I met him in Siparia and he had on his court clothes. He said he was by the court all the time. He went back and they told him the case was to­day.

How he died

Around 7.45 am, a crew was on their way to work when they found Sanchez's body in the road.Po­lice, led by Snr Supt Cyril Har­ry and In­sp Granger, found the body ly­ing face-up with a gun­shot wound to the back of the head.He was dressed in a three-quar­ter kha­ki pants and white socks and had a ban­dana around his neck. Po­lice found what ap­peared to be a 9mm bul­let cas­ing.

Around 10 pm on Sat­ur­day, Sanchez, a DJ and part-time elec­tri­cian at Petrotrin, left home to play mu­sic at Sta­tion 22 Bar at Los Charos Junc­tion. Af­ter the bar closed, he went to a par­ty next door.On Sun­day morn­ing when he did not re­turn home, his wife, Ma­halia Floyd, went in search of him and found his jer­sey, shoes and bi­cy­cle near the junc­tion.A re­port was made to the San­ta Flo­ra Po­lice who even got Petrotrin to emp­ty a pond dur­ing their search.

The killing he saw

On De­cem­ber 28, 2010, Sanchez ex­plained to the T&T Guardian how Chakum­ba-Mu­ral­do, the fa­ther of four, was shot at point-blank range.He said that around 9 pm, the vic­tim and sev­er­al oth­er work­ers from Qual­i­ty En­vi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices were wait­ing for trans­port to en­ter a forest­ed area in Erin where seis­mic sur­veys were tak­ing place.Chakum­ba-Mu­ral­do and an­oth­er man got in­to an ar­gu­ment, dur­ing which he was shot.Af­ter hid­ing for six days, the sus­pect, ac­com­pa­nied by his at­tor­ney Dex­ter Bai­ley, sur­ren­dered to act­ing Sgt Sal­ick Ja­groop at the San­ta Flo­ra Po­lice Sta­tion.