Sascha Wil­son

Rel­a­tives of a Coast Guard ser­vice­man who was shot by the po­lice in South Oropouche yes­ter­day, are re­ject­ing claims that he at­tacked them with a cut­lass.

Ely Goodridge,34, who lives with his rel­a­tives a short dis­tance away from where the in­ci­dent oc­curred is ward­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Po­lice have launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent.

He was shot on a por­tion of land which has been the sub­ject of a court bat­tle be­tween the Goodridge fam­i­ly and a com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice state­ment, pre­lim­i­nary re­ports re­vealed that of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, ac­com­pa­nied by a bailiff, pro­ceed­ed to Berridge Trace around 5.45 am on Tues­day to ef­fect an evic­tion pur­suant to a High Court judg­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the of­fi­cers were at­tacked by a man with a cut­lass, and in ac­cor­dance with the Use of Force pol­i­cy, one of the of­fi­cers dis­charged his firearm, strik­ing the man in his low­er ab­domen. How­ev­er, Vaughn Goodridge de­nied that his broth­er at­tacked the po­lice. He claimed that the land, five acres, had been in his fam­i­ly since the 1950s and they had been plant­i­ng agri­cul­ture crops and rear­ing an­i­mals on it.

How­ev­er, he said in 2008 a com­pa­ny claimed to have bought the land and the mat­ter went to court.

He com­plained that this was not the first time that their fence, struc­tures and crops on the land were bull­dozed. Goodridge said be­fore he ar­rived at the scene yes­ter­day morn­ing, a man who is stay­ing in a shed on the prop­er­ty was beat­en by the po­lice with a pig­foot.

He said the com­pa­ny’s se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer pushed his part­ner and he fell down a hill.

He de­scribed a tus­sle that oc­curred, fol­low­ing which his broth­er was shot. “When I hear the shot and I turn around I see the of­fi­cer with the gun like it fac­ing my di­rec­tion too and when I watch back down the hill I see my broth­er not get­ting up. When I gone and pull his jer­sey I see he had two holes (to his back) and blood run­ning out his mouth.”

Goodridge who showed sev­er­al ten­ant re­ceipts which he claimed were for the land, said, “We just want some jus­tice, that’s all.”

At­tempts to con­tact the com­pa­ny for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, the Coast Guard said it was aware that one of its mem­bers was in­jured in a shoot­ing in­ci­dent.

“The mat­ter has en­gaged the at­ten­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the shoot­ing. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing to­geth­er with part­ner agen­cies as we strive to con­tin­ue to pro­vide safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.” the state­ment said.