Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of two Mor­vant men killed by the po­lice want an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to their deaths, as they chal­lenged the po­lice’s re­port of how the killings oc­curred yes­ter­day.

Kwasi Williams, 23, and Al­lasafie Hug­gins, 26, were shot when of­fi­cers from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice TTPS ex­e­cut­ed war­rants for guns and am­mu­ni­tion at their homes in Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant.

The first in­ci­dent hap­pened at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.30 am when, ac­cord­ing to re­ports, po­lice en­tered Williams’ home. Po­lice claimed Williams opened fire on them, re­sult­ing in an ex­change of gun­fire. He was shot in the ex­changed and sub­se­quent­ly rushed to the hos­pi­tal where he died.

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed his home yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives de­nied the po­lice’s ac­count of what tran­spired.

In­stead, they claimed Williams was asleep when the of­fi­cers en­tered the home and opened fire on him.

Rel­a­tives were about to burn the blood-stained sheets, cloth­ing and mat­tress in his room when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed.

Rel­a­tives of Hug­gins al­so chal­lenged the po­lice’s ac­count of what led to his shoot­ing. They added that they al­so found it very pe­cu­liar that of­fi­cers shot Williams less than ten min­utes be­fore they ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at their home, which is al­so just a few hous­es away from Williams’ prop­er­ty.

Hug­gins was re­cent­ly re­leased from prison af­ter serv­ing a sen­tence for break­ing and en­ter­ing a home in the area and was wear­ing an elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing bracelet as part of the con­di­tions of his re­lease.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Hug­gins’ fa­ther, Steve, said the of­fi­cers came to his home and rushed every­one in­to one room of the house, which is sec­tioned in­to apart­ments. He said the of­fi­cers then start­ed knock­ing on the door of his son’s apart­ment.

The se­nior Hug­gins said he opened the door for the of­fi­cers, who then pushed him against a wall. He claimed rel­a­tives then heard three gun­shots and a fourth one a few mo­ments af­ter.

Rel­a­tives claimed it was on­ly af­ter the shoot­ing that the of­fi­cers gave them a copy of the search war­rant.

“Since my son was ar­rest­ed and has a mon­i­tor on his foot, he goes nowhere, and I take care of him,” the el­der Hug­gins said.

“It is on­ly a year since he has had that bracelet on his foot and I see the changes in my son’s life, as he stayed away from friends. We were hop­ing that be­cause of his good be­hav­iour over a year, it was our hope that this would help him re­move the bracelet and now this hap­pened here.”

He added, “From the time he leaves home and is out of the do­main, he gets a call, that is how se­ri­ous­ly his life was changed be­cause he can­not go any­where. The war­rant stat­ed that they were look­ing for guns and am­mu­ni­tion, my son can­not have that in my house here. I don’t tol­er­ate that here and he can’t go any­where, even if he had any­thing in here, he had to be crazy.”

Hug­gins said he was con­cerned about the po­lice ver­sion of the sto­ry which re­port­ed that his son shot at them when he opened the door. He said the pro­jec­tile they claimed came from his son was above the front door of the apart­ment.

Guardian Me­dia al­so saw of­fi­cers from the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty at Hug­gins’ home.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that the PCA start­ed con­duct­ing in­ter­views and record­ing state­ments with rel­a­tives and po­ten­tial eye­wit­ness­es at the scene of both in­ci­dents yes­ter­day.

The PCA of­fi­cials are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the scene of both in­ci­dents.

Guardian Me­dia al­so at­tempt­ed to con­tact Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ear­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for a com­ment on the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing but calls to her cell­phone went unan­swered.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, at around 430 am, of­fi­cers from the Mul­ti Op­tion Po­lice Sec­tion (MOPS) of the TTPS ex­e­cut­ed three search war­rants.

It said one per­son was ar­rest­ed for the pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion, while Williams and Hug­gins were killed in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.

Man am­bushed, killed out­side par­lour

Mean­while, in an un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dent in Ari­ma, a 45-year-old man iden­ti­fied as Ja­son Leza­ma was shot around 9.45 am at Mount Zion Road.

Leza­ma was sit­ting at a par­lour when un­known as­sailants opened fire on him. He was rushed to the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he died on ar­rival.

Po­lice are al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing this in­ci­dent.