Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin made an ur­gent call yes­ter­day for the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, law en­force­ment agen­cies and stake­hold­ers to take de­ci­sive ac­tion to rid com­mu­ni­ties of rogue el­e­ments.

She did so in re­sponse to a bru­tal bur­glary at the home of Mo­han and Shirley Per­sad at Sixth Com­pa­ny, New Grant, yes­ter­day. Mo­han is the own­er of Per­sad’s D’ Food King su­per­mar­kets.

Ben­jamin said it was a sad day for the com­mu­ni­ty as it grap­pled with the shock­ing news of a promi­nent busi­ness­man and val­ued stake­hold­er falling vic­tim to a vi­cious at­tack per­pe­trat­ed by the rogue el­e­ments plagu­ing the area. 

A re­port stat­ed that the cou­ple, aged 78, went to sleep at around 9.30 pm Mon­day and awoke to six men, one armed with a gun, in their house at around 3 am yes­ter­day. 

The ban­dits as­sault­ed the cou­ple be­fore ty­ing their hands with plas­tic straps and cov­er­ing their faces. They then emp­tied a vault con­tain­ing $10,000, $3,000 cash, a Smith and Wes­son re­volver with am­mu­ni­tion, a Rem­ing­ton shot­gun with am­mu­ni­tion, two Sam­sung mo­bile phones, a DVR, and gold jew­ellery be­fore mak­ing their es­cape.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the ban­dits forced open a win­dow at the side of the house and left through the front door. Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered fin­ger­prints at the scene but were un­suc­cess­ful in ob­tain­ing CCTV footage from the area.

In a me­dia re­lease, Ben­jamin said the com­mu­ni­ty had long looked up to Mo­han as a bea­con of hope, some­one who not on­ly con­tributed to the lo­cal econ­o­my but al­so played a vi­tal role in fos­ter­ing uni­ty and de­vel­op­ment. 

“This brazen act of vi­o­lence not on­ly threat­ens the safe­ty of in­di­vid­u­als but al­so the very fab­ric of the com­mu­ni­ty it­self. The in­ci­dent serves as an im­mense re­minder of the chal­lenges faced by many com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go, where law­less­ness and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty seem to thrive,” she said.

Ben­jamin ap­pealed to com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to unite in sol­i­dar­i­ty to sup­port the vic­tims and work with the au­thor­i­ties to en­sure jus­tice and for their neigh­bour­hood to once again thrive in peace. 

“As the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the con­stituen­cy of Moru­ga/Table­land, I stand with Mr Per­sad “D Food King” and all oth­er res­i­dents with­in my con­stituen­cy. There is a col­lec­tive hope that this in­ci­dent will catal­yse change. It is a call to ac­tion for all stake­hold­ers, both with­in and out­side the com­mu­ni­ty, to re­dou­ble their ef­forts in erad­i­cat­ing crime and vi­o­lence from their midst,” she said.