Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Days af­ter Tim­mi­an Fran­cois was fa­tal­ly shot by po­lice, his rel­a­tives say they have re­ceived no in­for­ma­tion about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion or when his au­top­sy will be con­duct­ed.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Fran­cois’s broth­er-in-law, Hay­den Ram­per­sad, said the fam­i­ly would re­turn to the Po­lice Com­plaints Di­vi­sion in San Fer­nan­do to­day to sub­mit doc­u­ments. They al­so plan to vis­it the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau to re­quest an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the of­fi­cers’ ac­tions.

There were no eye­wit­ness­es, but rel­a­tives dis­pute the po­lice ac­count of what hap­pened. They do not be­lieve Fran­cois at­tacked the of­fi­cers with a cut­lass or that the of­fi­cers iden­ti­fied them­selves as po­lice. They said that even if he was armed with a cut­lass, the of­fi­cers used ex­ces­sive force. They al­so de­nied that he was in­volved in a home in­va­sion.

Ram­per­sad said rel­a­tives were told at the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion that an in­spec­tor would be as­signed to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and that they would be con­tact­ed once the au­top­sy was sched­uled. He said no one had con­tact­ed them since.

“To me, it looks like they try­ing to hide some­thing. We want to get his body as soon as pos­si­ble to do the fu­ner­al,” he said.

Ram­per­sad said the fam­i­ly was strug­gling to cope with Fran­cois’s death and that scores of peo­ple had vis­it­ed their home to of­fer sup­port.

“Last night here had about 300 peo­ple. He was well known,” Ram­per­sad said. He added that the fam­i­ly was plan­ning a can­dle­light vig­il in Fran­cois’s mem­o­ry and call­ing for jus­tice.

The fam­i­ly al­so dis­putes the cir­cum­stances that led po­lice to Fran­cois’s home on Naggee Road, Hin­dus­tan, New Grant. Rel­a­tives ac­knowl­edged that Fran­cois had been in­volved in a do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed in­ci­dent on Sat­ur­day but in­sist­ed it was not a home in­va­sion.

Fran­cois, 41, worked with the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture and lived alone.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, of­fi­cers went to Fran­cois’s home around 10.15 am on Sun­day to de­tain him in con­nec­tion with a re­port­ed home in­va­sion at Fifth Com­pa­ny Road, In­di­an Walk. Po­lice al­leged that Fran­cois emerged with a cut­lass and ad­vanced to­wards them de­spite re­peat­ed warn­ings to drop the weapon.

The of­fi­cers opened fire, strik­ing him. He lat­er died de­spite med­ical in­ter­ven­tion. The TTPS said all fa­tal shoot­ings in­volv­ing po­lice are sub­ject to thor­ough and im­par­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tions.