The main sus­pect in the killing of 53-year-old Tri­cia Badaloo is still on the run.

Af­ter she was hacked to death at her San­gre Grande home two weeks ago, how­ev­er, her fam­i­ly said they did not know that the sus­pect was even out of prison.

He al­so chopped Badaloo’s daugh­ter, Tay­lor Ben­son, dur­ing the bloody at­tack.

It’s al­leged by fam­i­ly mem­bers that the main sus­pect is known to them and was ac­tu­al­ly re­mand­ed in prison for at­tempt­ing a sim­i­lar act four years ago.

This was con­firmed by po­lice, who said the com­plainant, Ben­son, was not aware that the sus­pect was out on bail.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the sus­pect was re­leased since March.

Many peo­ple were con­fused about why the po­lice did not in­form rel­a­tives that the sus­pect had been re­leased. Nat­u­ral­ly, the sto­ry gen­er­at­ed a lot of con­ver­sa­tion on so­cial me­dia, as it con­tin­ued a re­cent trend of vi­o­lence against women.

“The au­thor­i­ties should have in­formed the fam­i­ly that the sus­pect was be­ing re­leased from prison,” Michelle Joseph said in a con­ver­sa­tion on Face­book.

“This is mad­ness what I just read here, es­pe­cial­ly know­ing the man was re­leased un­know­ing­ly to them,” Phoenix Mel added to the de­bate.

Oth­ers blamed a failed ju­di­cial sys­tem and point­ed fin­gers at the po­lice and the T&T Prison Ser­vice.

How­ev­er, head of the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit Claire Guy-Al­leyne said they were not aware of Ben­son’s case. She point­ed out that the unit was es­tab­lished two years af­ter the at­tack­er was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody.

Guy-Al­leyne di­rect­ed ques­tions to the Prison Ser­vice, but al­so con­tact­ed on the case, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar said that’s not their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“It is not in our re­mit, not our pro­to­col, our pro­ce­dure to in­form fam­i­lies if any in­mate served their sen­tences and were re­leased to the pub­lic,” he said last week.

He said the Prison Ser­vice re­leas­es over 20 in­mates dai­ly and they do not dwell in­to why some­one came in­to prison.

Nei­ther the TTPS nor Prison Ser­vice could con­firm if the sus­pect sent threat­en­ing mes­sages to the vic­tim while in prison.

But Ra­moutar said if any vic­tim was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing this, they could con­tact the Prison Ser­vice at 800-PRSN.

The po­lice said a check in their data­base showed there were no re­ports of threats lodged by the vic­tim.

The house on Neil Street, Sangre Grande, where Tricia Badaloo was chopped to death defending her daughter Taylor Benson from being killed.

Ralph Banwarie

But chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Vi­sion on Mis­sion Giselle Chance says cur­rent pro­ce­dures are not good enough.

She said the fact that the fam­i­ly did not know of the sus­pect’s re­lease rais­es a lot of ques­tions.

“Was this in­mate clas­si­fied, be­cause I’m say­ing once you com­mit an act of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, whether that be sex­u­al or phys­i­cal as­sault, you should be as­sessed and you should be clas­si­fied as high-risk,” she said on Sun­day.

Vi­sion on Mis­sion is a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion that of­fers re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, rein­te­gra­tion and re­set­tle­ment ser­vices for pris­on­ers, ex-of­fend­ers, de­por­tees, delin­quent youth and so­cial­ly dis­placed peo­ple.

Chance said re­ports on these in­mates should, in fact, go to the courts for pre-tri­al arrange­ments and a prop­er psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment should be done be­fore they are re­leased.

She added: “What we have now is a hot pota­to sys­tem, we okay, he re­leased and he have a piece of pa­per that say­ing doh go here and there ... I mean the psy­chol­o­gy of these in­di­vid­u­als, you think the piece of pa­per go­ing and pre­vent them from at­tempt­ing to reach out to his vic­tim?”

But the prison ser­vice is not the on­ly en­ti­ty to blame, she said.

Chance said all pro­tec­tive in­sti­tu­tions need­ed to come to­geth­er and form a clear pol­i­cy. She said the sys­tems ex­ist­ed but were with­out guide­lines on what should be done.

“A task force re­port was done in 2002 and it speaks to the re­form of the prison ser­vice and the trans­for­ma­tion and in this re­port, they are key rec­om­men­da­tions made that deals with com­mu­ni­ty cor­rec­tions… tran­si­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties that cer­tain in­mates should be re­mand­ed to on their re­lease and there should be no op­por­tu­ni­ty for an in­mate to be re­leased and the vic­tim not know,” she said.

She asked how many more women must die be­fore a safe­ty net is es­tab­lished.

Head of the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work Adri­ana San­drine Rat­tan shared the sen­ti­ment. She said it was time for a meet­ing of the minds to find ways to fix the loop­holes in the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

“If we con­tin­ue along this tra­jec­to­ry, there will be re­cur­rences of this in­ci­dent. We will con­tin­ue to lose our women in the most vi­cious man­ner. We can­not con­tin­ue like its busi­ness as usu­al be­cause it is not,” she said.