Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A rel­a­tive of the po­lice of­fi­cer in­volved in the shoot­ing death of a 74-year-old man in Mt St George, is now plead­ing with the pub­lic to al­low the po­lice to do their job and let the full truth come out.

Af­ter re­cent­ly deal­ing with a string of at­tempt­ed break-ins at the fam­i­ly home, they woke up ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing to find some­one had tried to burn the house down—an act they be­lieve is linked to pub­lic anger over the in­ci­dent.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 5 am last Fri­day, 74-year-old Frank Sandy was shot by the of­fi­cer, who re­port­ed that the el­der­ly man at­tempt­ed to en­ter his home. Sandy’s rel­a­tives, how­ev­er, ac­cused the of­fi­cer of us­ing force on a pen­sion­er who suf­fered mem­o­ry loss.

The of­fi­cer’s fam­i­ly be­lieves the ar­son at­tempt came from in­di­vid­u­als act­ing on in­com­plete in­for­ma­tion, and they are urg­ing the pub­lic not to rush to judge­ment while in­ves­ti­ga­tions are still un­der­way.

“Just give it a few days un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­cludes, and you could get all the in­for­ma­tion be­fore you take any sort of paths,” the rel­a­tive, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“Be­cause this act of van­dal­ism, this act of ar­son could have re­sult­ed in peo­ple be­ing burnt alive, chil­dren be­ing built alive.”

The fire was set out­side the top floor of the two-storey house, where sev­er­al rel­a­tives, in­clud­ing chil­dren and a se­nior cit­i­zen, were asleep.

The rel­a­tive said it was an­oth­er rel­a­tive who first no­ticed the blaze and was able to ex­tin­guish it be­fore it spread—like­ly pre­vent­ing what could have been a fa­tal tragedy.

“This could have killed us,” the rel­a­tive said.

“It could have been that the whole place went up and every­body on the in­side went up. We’re afraid. This has gone be­yond ver­bal. This is phys­i­cal. And this is in­tent to kill.”

They said it wasn’t the first time the house had been tar­get­ed. Over the past few weeks, there have been sev­er­al at­tempt­ed home in­va­sions, some of which were caught on se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras. The rel­a­tive said this is the first time the sit­u­a­tion turned out this way.

De­spite the ten­sion, the rel­a­tive said the fam­i­ly un­der­stands the pain the com­mu­ni­ty is feel­ing and ex­tend­ed sym­pa­thy to the rel­a­tives of Sandy.

“He was a very, very friend­ly per­son in the neigh­bour­hood,” the rel­a­tive said.

Still, they are ask­ing for pa­tience and cau­tion—not just for the sake of the of­fi­cer’s fam­i­ly, but for the safe­ty of the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole.

“There’s no say­ing what burn­ing a house, the peo­ple in­side of it, could do. It could lit­er­al­ly kill every­body, off of a tem­po­rary mis­un­der­stand­ing, or off of not get­ting in­for­ma­tion or not get­ting cer­tain in­for­ma­tion,” the rel­a­tive added.

“So once again, to the pub­lic, please al­low for the po­lice to do their part. Please. We send out our sym­pa­thies. We send out our con­do­lences.”

They say pub­lic re­ac­tion—es­pe­cial­ly on so­cial me­dia—has been swift and harsh, but much of it is based on as­sump­tions and hearsay.

“And the last thing that any­body would want is that, due to feel­ing tem­po­rary anger, you per­ma­nent­ly take some­body’s life … or per­ma­nent­ly af­fect some­body in a bad way.”

To­ba­go po­lice have launched a sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the sus­pect­ed ar­son. Mean­while, the probe in­to the fa­tal shoot­ing con­tin­ues.