Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Hours af­ter To­ba­go’s new ACP land­ed on the is­land to take lead­er­ship of the To­ba­go Po­lice Di­vi­sion, the mur­der toll climbed again.

The is­land record­ed mur­der #23 on Fri­day night. The mur­der hap­pened on the first day that new­ly ap­point­ed ACP Os­wain Subero took of­fice. Now, the is­land’s po­lice are search­ing for a mo­tive be­hind the mur­der of Bran­don Ed­wards, 27, who was gunned down in Ar­gyle.

Ed­wards, a san­i­ta­tion work­er from Lam­my Road, was found with gun­shot wounds along the road­way near his home around 10.28. Po­lice said Ed­wards had just left a lime at Bread­fruit Al­ley, Ar­gyle, and was walk­ing home when the shoot­ing oc­curred.

The dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer pro­nounced him dead at the scene. His body was tak­en to Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for a post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion. CP Subero was un­avail­able for com­ment yes­ter­day. Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine could not be reached for com­ment.

Days be­fore his ar­rival in To­ba­go, Subero said he was up for the chal­lenge. He plans to build on ex­ist­ing crime-fight­ing strate­gies while urg­ing the com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port the po­lice for re­al re­sults.

Subero is well-ac­quaint­ed with To­ba­go and its cul­ture, hav­ing co­or­di­nat­ed ma­jor events on the is­land for sev­er­al years. He spoke of plans to work close­ly with To­bag­o­ni­ans and his of­fi­cers in the fight against crime. At that time he told Guardian Me­dia, “I don’t mind a chal­lenge, and I can­not guar­an­tee any­thing, but I can cer­tain­ly guar­an­tee that if the To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion is in sup­port of the po­lice, we def­i­nite­ly will see some re­sults.”

Cur­tis Williams, chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, wel­comed the new lead­er­ship but said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty will de­mand re­sults.

He said that To­ba­go’s cul­ture is dif­fer­ent from Trinidad’s, and it will be im­por­tant for the new ACP to fo­cus on ac­tion rather than talk. Williams said it was time for a new ap­proach to fight­ing crime in To­ba­go.