KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The De­fence Force (TTDF) has ac­knowl­edged that a 19-year-old man died dur­ing Wednes­day’s joint po­lice-army raid in Fyz­abad, say­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the shoot­ing are be­ing ex­am­ined as the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly con­tin­ues to dis­pute the po­lice ac­count of his death.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the TTDF ex­pressed con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and loved ones of Aaron An­der­son, who was shot and killed dur­ing an op­er­a­tion at his fam­i­ly’s home along Del­hi Road, Fyz­abad.

“The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent are be­ing ex­am­ined, and the De­fence Force is co­op­er­at­ing ful­ly with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties,” the TTDF said.

The TTDF al­so reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to pro­fes­sion­al­ism, dis­ci­pline, ac­count­abil­i­ty and the law­ful ex­e­cu­tion of its du­ties.

How­ev­er, it de­clined to pro­vide fur­ther de­tails about the in­ci­dent, say­ing it would re­frain from com­ment­ing on the spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances while the mat­ter re­mained un­der ex­am­i­na­tion.

An­der­son was shot by a TTDF sergeant dur­ing an op­er­a­tion in­volv­ing of­fi­cers from the Home In­va­sion Team and De­fence Force per­son­nel.

The team had gone to the prop­er­ty to ex­e­cute a search war­rant for firearms and am­mu­ni­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice ac­count, An­der­son point­ed a firearm at mem­bers of the search team, prompt­ing the sol­dier to dis­charge a round from his ri­fle, strik­ing An­der­son in the head.

How­ev­er, An­der­son’s rel­a­tives have chal­lenged that ver­sion of events, rais­ing ques­tions about what hap­pened in­side the house be­fore the fa­tal shoot­ing.

His fam­i­ly has al­leged that An­der­son was tak­en up­stairs be­fore they heard gun­shots.

The fam­i­ly has al­so ques­tioned the po­lice ac­count of the firearm al­leged­ly re­cov­ered dur­ing the op­er­a­tion.

The TTDF’s state­ment did not ad­dress the fam­i­ly’s al­le­ga­tions or pro­vide de­tails about the sol­dier’s ac­tions dur­ing the op­er­a­tion.

It re­it­er­at­ed that it takes its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties se­ri­ous­ly and re­mains com­mit­ted to the law­ful ex­e­cu­tion of its du­ties, but main­tained that it would make no fur­ther com­ment while the mat­ter re­mains un­der ex­am­i­na­tion.