Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Hours be­fore the fu­ner­al of Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Cor­po­ral Anus­ka Ever­s­ley, one of her col­leagues and two oth­er men ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly in court charged with four of­fences, in­clud­ing mur­der. It was al­so fi­nal­ly re­vealed that 123 guns were stolen from the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion on the night Ever­s­ley was mur­dered.

Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Con­sta­ble Ji­van “Big­gs” Coop­er, 28, of La So­phie Trace, Clax­ton Bay; Kwame Arnold, 20, of Lodge Road, Clax­ton Bay and Nicholas “Nico” Ram­dass, 24, al­so of Lodge Road, Clax­ton Bay, were re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody by High Court Mas­ter Deli­cia Bethelmy.

The charges stemmed from an in­ci­dent on April 19, when Ever­s­ley was found mur­dered in­side the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion at King’s Wharf and a large quan­ti­ty of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion stolen. An au­top­sy found that Ever­s­ley, 41, was stran­gled and beat­en.

The three ac­cused were joint­ly charged with Ever­s­ley’s mur­der by Ag ASP Ma­haraj, of the Homi­cide Bu­reau, Re­gion III. They were al­so charged with pos­ses­sion of firearms with­out be­ing the hold­er of firearm user’s li­cences, or be­ing ex­empt­ed un­der Sec­tion 7 of the Firearms Act. The charge re­lates to 114 pis­tols, one re­volver, six shot­guns, two MPX sub­ma­chine guns and 173 firearm mag­a­zines.

A third charge al­leges pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion with­out a firearm user’s li­cence or ex­emp­tion un­der Sec­tion 7 of the Firearms Act. The am­mu­ni­tion list­ed in­cludes 4,355 rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion, 30 rounds of 12-gauge am­mu­ni­tion and 10 rounds of .38 am­mu­ni­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the men were charged with rob­bing Ever­s­ley of the firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, and at the time of, or im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore or af­ter the rob­bery, us­ing per­son­al vi­o­lence against her. The charge states that the firearms and am­mu­ni­tion were the prop­er­ty of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Coop­er’s at­tor­ney, Kei­th Beck­les, raised con­cerns about his client’s dri­ver’s per­mit cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, along with al­le­ga­tions that he was the main sus­pect even be­fore he was for­mal­ly charged. He said he was con­cerned about “the prej­u­dice and risk of bias” to the ju­ry pool due to what he de­scribed as the “sen­sa­tion­al and mis­lead­ing pub­li­ca­tion” about his client on so­cial me­dia.

Beck­les al­so raised ques­tions about his client be­ing held un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO). Ra­manan ex­plained that ini­tial­ly, a Fur­ther De­ten­tion No­tice had been grant­ed for Coop­er, but pri­or to the court ap­pear­ance, he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that a PDO had been is­sued by the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, he not­ed that the charg­ing of­fi­cer did not make that ap­pli­ca­tion and that he had not yet seen the or­der.

Pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Rea­gan Ra­manan in­di­cat­ed that the pros­e­cu­tion’s case com­pris­es 20 state­ments, with an ad­di­tion­al 32 state­ments out­stand­ing, along with ex­hibits, in­clud­ing the post-mortem cer­tifi­cate, pho­tographs and video footage. He re­quest­ed to have the com­plet­ed file sub­mit­ted to the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on or be­fore Ju­ly 24.

At­tor­neys Krysan Ram­bert and Pe­rusha Lord ap­peared as du­ty coun­sel for Arnold and Ram­dass, re­spec­tive­ly. They in­di­cat­ed that the fam­i­lies of both men in­tend to re­tain pri­vate at­tor­neys to rep­re­sent them.

The Mas­ter gave di­rec­tives for sub­mis­sions by both the de­fence and the pros­e­cu­tion on spec­i­fied dates. Mas­ter Bethelmy fixed Oc­to­ber 15 for the sta­tus hear­ing, while the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing is sched­uled for De­cem­ber 10.