Although the T&T Police Service is yet to officially confirm the identities of the four men killed during an alleged gunfight with police in St Augustine on Thursday, their relatives have already seemingly accepted their loss as they quietly mourned the killings yesterday.
The unsubstantiated information listed the deceased men as Akeem Punnette, Christopher Noreiga, Tevon “Beaver” Maynard and Joshua Allen-Job.
The four men were reportedly killed during an exchange of gunfire with law enforcement agents at a wooden shack in the mountains that surround Upper St Michael’s Road, off St John’s Road, St Augustine, at 9.45 am on Thursday.
Efforts to locate Allen’s family yesterday were unsuccessful, while relatives of Punnette and Noreiga refused to speak with reporters.
When Guardian Media visited Maynard’s aunt, who asked not to be identified, she wept as she gazed upon the house where he grew up in Central Trinidad. She recalled raising Maynard as her own after his mother migrated to try and improve their life.
“I mind Tevon Maynard and it hurt me to hear the news yesterday (Thursday)...I bawl, I cry...” she trailed off, crying.
She said he left the family home in 2004 following an altercation with her son.
Recalling the challenges she had encountered during his teenage days, she said, “Whatever Tevon do in his life until his death came along, is what he wanted to do but he never grow up like that.”
She said Maynard was in his early 30s and was the father of a ten-year-old boy.
“I haven’t seen Tevon for years. You always hear the police come looking for him. They don’t like to say what they want, they always running in my place, looking for Tevon.”
She added, “At the end of the day, I sorry whatever happen to him because as a mother, you talk to your children, you make your children but you don’t make their mind.”
Saying Maynard never knew his father and that his mother had relocated from Trinidad before he turned five, his aunt revealed, “After he grow to be a big man and you know when they grow up, they turn and want to do their own thing...you can’t speak to them, you can’t tell them because they feel it wrong, you understand, so you does have to leave them.
“If you try to reach out to them, you can’t because they not around for you to reach out to them.”
Pointing out that Maynard’s mother had been supporting him financially, the grieving woman said despite the internal family challenges, she never turned her back on them and her door was always open.
Holding firm to her faith, she said, “The person that I know myself to be now, is a child that serves God and you can’t have people in mind regardless of what.
“And although whatever happen or whatever Tevon do in the past, I pray God forgive him.”
She said she believed he was cheated of a normal childhood bond with two parents present.
“He had me as an aunt but yet as a mother,” she said.
Claiming he used to listen to her while living at her house, she admitted, “He never response. He uses to listen but he never say nothing. He would sit down and he will have his head bend down.”
Asked if she felt she had failed him in a way, Maynard’s aunt stared off as she shook her head and answered, “I can’t say because it is so painful.”
Her voice broke as she said, “I cannot go and see Tevon in a box. I cannot go to that funeral, it hard.”
Asked if she believed information that he was allegedly involved in the kidnapping of doubles vendor Anisha Hosein-Singh on May 18 in El Dorado, she said, “Is nothing to doubt. The way the world going today, you can’t trust, because he could say he ain’t doing it but behind closed doors, we don’t know what they doing.”
Appealing to the young people today to “come to God,” she added, “That is the only man could save them. The obeah man cyar save them. The pundit cyar save them but come to God.
“Youths put down allyuh guns and show God that respect.”
When Guardian Media visited Noreiga’s home at Five Rivers, Arouca, relatives were hostile and aggressive as they urged reporters to leave the premises.
Punnette’s relatives at Upper St Michael’s Road also declined to speak, while nearby residents were unable to confirm if Allen-Job was from the area.
Meanwhile, no official updates were issued by the T&T Police Service yesterday in relation to the ongoing investigation into Hosein-Singh’s kidnapping and the police-involved killings of the men.
The Anti-Kidnapping Unit led by ASP Darryl Ramdass continues to spearhead the kidnapping investigation, while ASP Jaggernauth is leading the investigation into the killings in the NCD.
Guardian Media understands the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) has launched a parallel investigation into the killings.
