RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

In what po­lice be­lieve was an act of re­venge, a for­mer sol­dier was gunned down at his Em­ba­cadere, San Fer­nan­do home on Sat­ur­day.

He has been iden­ti­fied as 27-year-old Kadeem Ash­ford of Build­ing 4, La­dy Hailes Av­enue.

Around 8.18 pm, E999 po­lice re­ceived a re­port that a loud ex­plo­sion had been heard at Em­bac­cadere. Ash­ford’s un­cle Ger­ald Ar­cia told po­lice he was at home when he was told that Ash­ford had been shot on the north side of Build­ing 5.

Ash­ford was found ly­ing on his back, dressed in a black T-shirt, long blue jeans, and black sneak­ers. There was a gun­shot wound to his head, just above the left ear. The of­fi­cers im­me­di­ate­ly cor­doned off the area and re­cov­ered a spent 9-mil­lime­tre shell.

Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Rhon­da Balkissoon or­dered the body re­moved to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Mor­tu­ary. A post-mortem will be done at the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre to­day.

Po­lice say they are treat­ing the mur­der as a po­ten­tial act of re­venge and are ask­ing any­one with in­for­ma­tion to come for­ward.

In 2019, Ash­ford was ar­rest­ed at Camp Og­den for his pos­si­ble con­nec­tion to a mur­der in south Trinidad.

He is re­port­ed to have filmed a video be­fore one of his es­capes, jok­ing­ly en­cour­ag­ing the au­thor­i­ties to state that he is a mem­ber of the T&T Reg­i­ment who was “ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous.” He was dis­hon­ourably dis­charged from the Reg­i­ment.