JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A small group of main­ly fam­i­ly and a few Las Cuevas vil­lagers yes­ter­day paid trib­ute to Chad “Char­po” Joseph, who was killed in a US airstrike on a pur­port­ed drug ves­sel on Oc­to­ber 14, close to Venezuela.

While those gath­ered at the memo­r­i­al ser­vice were som­bre and in tears, Joseph’s aunt, Lynette Burn­ley, was emo­tion­al. She said if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty, she would tell US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to stop killing in­no­cent peo­ple.

Speak­ing with the me­dia at her Las Cuevas Vil­lage home af­ter a memo­r­i­al ser­vice at the St Michael’s RC Church for her 26-year-old nephew, Burn­ley called on Trump to stop what she called the “ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings.”

“I just want to tell him to stop it. You know these peo­ple? Peo­ple’s fam­i­ly! He wouldn’t like that to hap­pen to his fam­i­ly. I sure he wouldn’t like that to hap­pen to his fam­i­ly. So, you need to stop it. That’s all I have to tell him. Stop it!”

Burn­ley said the fam­i­ly has ex­pe­ri­enced greater pain over Joseph’s killing each day since the in­ci­dent. Com­pound­ing the pain, she said, was the fail­ure of the Gov­ern­ment to reach out to the fam­i­ly.

Asked about re­ports that Joseph was in­volved in nar­co-traf­fick­ing, Burn­ley cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied that.

“Nah! We know all that was a lie, and I can prove it is a big lie. He get hold with some am­mu­ni­tion, but they putting it like is drugs, but that was not so.”

When asked what mes­sage she would want to send to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who sup­ports the US navy pres­ence and ac­tions in the South­ern Caribbean in Trump’s war on in­ter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing, the griev­ing aunt said due process should be fol­lowed.

“Whether some­one in­volved in that or not, is hu­man be­ings. They not sup­posed to kill some­one like that. If you are say­ing is drugs, they’re traf­fick­ing or what­ev­er, hold them and charge them. But this killing thing, no, that won’t work and kill peo­ple’s fam­i­ly? No way!”

She said the fam­i­ly will be seek­ing le­gal ad­vice on the next step soon.

The memo­r­i­al ser­vice was cov­ered by in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia out­lets, in­clud­ing Al Jazeera, Reuters, NPR and the Wall Street Jour­nal.

Dur­ing the ser­vice, Joseph was re­mem­bered as be­ing loved by all in the fish­ing vil­lage.

Fa­ther Ken­neth Ass­ing com­fort­ed the rel­a­tives gath­ered, say­ing God was the on­ly per­son who could bring joy to them at this time. He re­mind­ed those mourn­ing that death was in­evitable, adding that Joseph’s killing was trag­ic and ac­knowl­edged the pain his un­ex­pect­ed demise had caused the fam­i­ly.

But even as they griev­ed, Burn­ley said there is some hope that her nephew was not killed and he’s some­where, alive and re­cu­per­at­ing.

“Some of his friends and his peo­ple know he was com­ing home, and like his ma­ma knows he was com­ing. So, when they hear that, they’re say­ing it’s true. It’s him who was on the boat and what­ev­er. But I still don’t be­lieve that he blew up, and I’m hop­ing that he’s some­where and some­body could find him.”

Joseph’s moth­er, Lenore Burn­ley, held a pri­vate memo­r­i­al at her Matelot home.