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Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Erla a no-show; Court orders CoP to return businessman’s guns

by

628 days ago
20230908

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A busi­ness­man from Mar­aval has emerged vic­to­ri­ous in his law­suit against Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher. It came as a re­sult of her de­ci­sion to seize all three of his li­censed firearms, af­ter one was stolen by his rel­a­tive who used it to com­mit sui­cide. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad up­held the ju­di­cial re­view case brought by the man, whose name was with­held based on se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns due to the na­ture of his case. 

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the man, who owns a con­tract­ing com­pa­ny, was first grant­ed a Firearms User’s Li­cence (FUL) for a se­mi-au­to­mat­ic pis­tol in 2001.

His FUL was sub­se­quent­ly var­ied to al­low him to pos­sess an­oth­er pis­tol and a 12-gauge shot­gun. 

On Au­gust 30, 2021, the man took one of his firearms with him when he and his fam­i­ly went to spend time at their va­ca­tion home Down the Is­lands. 

The man re­port­ed­ly se­cured the pis­tol in a locked safe box but one of his rel­a­tives man­aged to ac­cess it and used the gun to com­mit sui­cide. 

The gun was seized by in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion as part of their probe in­to the sui­cide. In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so took pos­ses­sion of his FUL as they claimed that they need­ed to ver­i­fy that the gun was cov­ered un­der it. 

Al­though they promised to re­turn the FUL with­in one week, it was not. 

The of­fi­cers al­so seized the man’s oth­er li­censed firearms and am­mu­ni­tion that were stored at his home, as they claimed that he could not re­main in pos­ses­sion of them while they still had his FUL. 

The man filed the law­suit af­ter the FUL and the firearms not used in the in­ci­dent were not re­turned. 

Hare­wood-Christo­pher did not pro­vide ev­i­dence in re­sponse to the law­suit, which was in­stead giv­en by act­ing Cor­po­ral Shaneyae King, who was as­signed to in­ves­ti­gate the death of the busi­ness­man’s rel­a­tive. 

King claimed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged sui­cide mor­phed in­to a homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as three peo­ple who were present at the time of the shoot­ing, in­clud­ing the busi­ness­man, test­ed pos­i­tive for gun­pow­der residue. 

King claimed that he sub­mit­ted an in­ves­tiga­tive file to se­nior of­fi­cers, who ad­vised him to ob­tain an ex­pert opin­ion rel­a­tive to the gun­shot residue re­sults and a cer­tifi­cate of analy­sis for items seized as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­fore it (the file) is sub­mit­ted to Hare­wood-Christo­pher and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. 

He claimed that he did not re­ceive the ad­di­tion­al doc­u­ments up to when he pre­pared the af­fi­davit in Jan­u­ary and the weapons and FUL were be­ing with­held as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure un­til the probe was com­plet­ed. 

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad crit­i­cised Hare­wood-Christo­pher for fail­ing to pro­vide ev­i­dence. 

“The lack of de­tails as to when steps were tak­en with re­spect to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pass­ing of doc­u­ments seemed to be dis­cour­te­ous to the court, in the fail­ure to be full and frank so that the court could see the whole pic­ture in­clud­ing the ex­pe­di­tion of the process when nec­es­sary and where pos­si­ble,” Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said. 

He al­so point­ed out that the busi­ness­man was nev­er pros­e­cut­ed for fail­ing to prop­er­ly se­cure the firearm. 

“There­fore, since that con­cern ie the stor­age or se­cur­ing of the firearms, or any oth­er of­fence re­lat­ed to the con­tra­ven­tion of any term or con­di­tion of the li­cence, is no longer on the ta­ble, the de­fen­dant should have ex­plained to the court why she thought it nec­es­sary to re­tain the firearms and the FUL in cir­cum­stances when she did not con­sid­er the claimant’s pos­si­ble fail­ure to prop­er­ly se­cure the same ac­tion­able,” Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said. 

“Since her thought process was not laid bare be­fore this court to ex­plain what she con­sid­ered and what she thought im­por­tant, a du­ty which she could not del­e­gate to act­ing Cpl King or any­one else, the court comes to the view that the con­tin­ued re­ten­tion of the same is un­ex­plained and there­fore is un­law­ful,” he added. 

As part of his judg­ment, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad quashed the de­ci­sion to with­hold the firearms and the FUL and or­dered that the items be re­turned. 

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s Of­fice was or­dered to pay the busi­ness­man’s le­gal costs. 

The busi­ness­man was rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh, Vashisht Seep­er­sad and Sav­it­ri Sama­roo. The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Naio­mi Her­bert and Michael Bis­soon­di­al. 


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