Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The rel­a­tives of two men killed dur­ing a pur­port­ed shootout with po­lice are ques­tion­ing the of­fi­cial ver­sion of the in­ci­dent put for­ward by the TTPS, as they are doubt­ful that ei­ther of their rel­a­tives at­tacked the of­fi­cers first.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Crim­i­nal Gang In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (NCDG­IU) re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that men in a red Hon­da Vezel were plan­ning a rob­bery at a busi­ness­place in Jairas­ingh Vil­lage, San­gre Grande, on Sun­day af­ter­noon.

Of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the scene, saw the car and tried to in­ter­cept it but claimed they were shot at by one of the men.

Po­lice re­turned fire, killing both men, lat­er iden­ti­fied as Shyien Tran­coso and off-du­ty sol­dier En­rique Gar­cia, both 25 years old.

Of­fi­cers found an AR-15 with 25 rounds of ar­mour-pierc­ing 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the scene of the shoot­ing on Mon­day, Gar­cia’s fa­ther, John Gar­cia, said he did not be­lieve his son opened fire on the of­fi­cers and main­tained that he was com­mit­ted to his role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a sol­dier.

The el­der Gar­cia said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly hurt af­ter vis­it­ing the mor­tu­ary of the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal ear­li­er on Mon­day and see­ing the con­di­tion of the body.

Re­fer­ring to claims that an as­sault ri­fle was found and seized in his son’s car, Gar­cia said he wasn’t con­vinced this was true.

“When I see him (in the morgue) this morn­ing, it’s hard for me. I couldn’t hold back. It’s un­fair for me.

“No way. That could nev­er hap­pen. Every­body know they would fab­ri­cate and say they get a gun.

“You have a big AR-15 in front of you, an AR-15 is a big gun, and my son trained to shoot, so he just wait there and let alyuh kill him with an AR-15?

“You go­ing and rob some­body with the same num­ber plate, in the same area you from and then say­ing the car is a thief car?

Gar­cia al­so firm­ly de­nied claims cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia that the car was stolen, in­sist­ing that it be­longed to his son, who was mak­ing pay­ments for it through a cred­it union.

Gar­cia said he be­lieved that the po­lice were ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to ar­rest Tran­coso when the in­ci­dent hap­pened and urged oth­er per­sons to keep a dis­tance be­tween them­selves and oth­ers who may be in trou­ble with the law.

“If you know any­body do­ing any­thing wrong, don’t bring them close to your house or put them in your car, be­cause you’ll lose your life.

“Every­body is say­ing be­cause of that youth man, my son dead, be­cause he have a rap sheet.

“You know how young peo­ple is; that’s his neigh­bour, so he just mov­ing around with him.”

Gar­dia said his son was last as­signed as part of a Joint Po­lice Army Pa­trol in Port-of-Spain but was most re­cent­ly trans­ferred to Ch­agua­nas.

Re­call­ing their last in­ter­ac­tion dur­ing the Great Race event from To­ba­go in Au­gust, the el­der Gar­cia said his son dis­cussed open­ing a busi­ness of his own as he con­sid­ered a ca­reer out­side of the mil­i­tary.

Guardian Me­dia al­so vis­it­ed Tran­coso’s fam­i­ly home and spoke with his moth­er, Sher­ry Ann Tran­coso who said she was still con­fused over what led to her son’s death.

While she ac­knowl­edged that Tran­coso had pre­vi­ous le­gal is­sues and was im­pris­oned for a brief pe­ri­od, she al­so did not be­lieve the of­fi­cial ver­sion of events put for­ward by the po­lice.

Re­call­ing their last in­ter­ac­tion be­fore leav­ing home, Tran­coso said her son picked up his eight-year-old daugh­ter and dropped her off be­fore leav­ing a sec­ond time.

She lat­er heard from one of Tran­coso’s sib­lings that he was killed by po­lice that evening, and was hurt that she and oth­er rel­a­tives were not au­tho­rised to view his body.

“How will we get clo­sure if we don’t see the body to con­firm that it’s him? I don’t think it’s fair to us as the fam­i­ly.

“It tough ... it heart­break­ing just to know, but I need to know clo­sure and I just need to know what re­al­ly hap­pened be­cause we haven’t got­ten any word on what took place, on­ly hearsay and they say.

“I read some­where that they were plan­ning a rob­bery, but how could the po­lice say they were plan­ning a rob­bery? Why didn’t they stop the ve­hi­cle and search it or what­ev­er?

“ I don’t know, eh, but I could be wrong.”

One rel­a­tive said Tran­coso worked as a con­struc­tion work­er af­ter spend­ing time in prison in 2020 and was mak­ing ef­forts to turn his life around.

He said the in­ci­dent was par­tic­u­lar­ly sad for Tran­coso’s daugh­ter, who was aware of her fa­ther’s death.

The Hon­da Vezel dri­ven by Tran­coso was towed to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, where it re­mained on Mon­day for fur­ther analy­sis.

Sev­er­al bul­let holes were vis­i­ble on the car’s wind­screen.