Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

As­so­ci­a­tion of Fu­ner­al Pro­fes­sion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Bel­grove is ad­vis­ing the par­ents of the four Pe­terkin mur­der vic­tims to ex­plore their le­gal op­tions over the state their bod­ies were al­lowed to de­te­ri­o­rate to be­fore au­top­sies were con­duct­ed.

His call came yes­ter­day af­ter the par­ents viewed their bod­ies at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James on Tues­day and found the bod­ies of three of the four sib­lings to be swollen and dis­coloured.

“There is a le­gal re­dress the fam­i­ly should be con­sid­er­ing...of course it starts with the state and the po­lice,” he said.

On Sep­tem­ber 22, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12.30, gun­men opened fire on the house at La Re­treat Ex­ten­sion, Heights of Gua­napo, where Faith Pe­terkin, 10; Ar­i­an­na Pe­terkin, 14; Shane Pe­terkin, 17; and Tiffany Pe­terkin, 19; were asleep. Five of their rel­a­tives were al­so in­jured in the at­tack.

How­ev­er, the sib­lings’ fa­ther, Shawn Pe­terkin, com­plained about the state of their bod­ies af­ter view­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing them on Tues­day.

The fu­ner­al for the sib­lings is card­ed for to­day in Ari­ma.

Bel­grove yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that this was not the first time some­thing like this has hap­pened, adding the as­so­ci­a­tion has been try­ing to get an au­di­ence with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to form a com­mit­tee to deal with the col­lec­tion of bod­ies from crime scenes.

“It is poor­ly or­gan­ised and has caused ex­treme prob­lems,” she said.

He said while he was not sat­is­fied with the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by the fu­ner­al home which han­dled the bod­ies, he be­lieves the po­lice were at fault.

“The new com­mis­sion­er, who we have writ­ten to four times— and the fifth one to­day—but no re­sponse, no ac­tions, noth­ing, but the po­lice call on fu­ner­al homes and give them this con­tracts, they are not re­al­ly con­tracts but give them this per­mis­sion to pick up these de­ceased per­sons with­out any due dili­gence,” he said.

Bel­grove, who joined his fa­ther’s busi­ness in 1974, said in­ter­ven­tion from the as­so­ci­a­tion will en­sure that the process is done prop­er­ly and this in­cludes the dress code of un­der­tak­ers.

“We are in the busi­ness, we are the as­so­ci­a­tion, we know who are the peo­ple who will have the fa­cil­i­ties, we are sim­ply say­ing, madam Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, let us deal with this sit­u­a­tion...we will han­dle who should be au­tho­rised, we will en­sure that peo­ple can con­form to the CSI stan­dards,” he said.

Bel­grove added that the po­lice’s prac­tice of keep­ing bod­ies in hot ve­hi­cles wait­ing for an au­top­sy for long pe­ri­ods was poor prac­tice, but in this case, he be­lieves it was clear­ly a re­frig­er­a­tion is­sue, as the vic­tims were young with­out any health is­sues.

“There are many oth­er fu­ner­al homes do­ing the same...just un­der­stand the dis­tress the fam­i­ly has been in, four chil­dren mur­dered in this bru­tal mur­der and now you can’t even say good­bye in a mean­ing­ful way,” he said.

He said there’s a sim­ple so­lu­tion to fix the prob­lem but due to a lack of prop­er or­gan­i­sa­tion, the fam­i­ly was put in even more dis­tress.

Bel­grove said the fu­ner­al home in ques­tion is part of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, head of the Homi­cide Bu­reau, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rishi Singh, said they had paid at­ten­tion to com­ments on so­cial me­dia about the state of the bod­ies and had got­ten some pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion. Singh added that he had ap­point­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tor to look in­to the cir­cum­stances and will ad­dress the is­sue next week.

Mean­while, one fu­ner­al di­rec­tor who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, ex­plained the process of tak­ing bod­ies from a crime scene to the fu­ner­al home.

She said once the Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer (DMO) sus­pects foul play, they call the fu­ner­al home on du­ty in the area to pick up the body. This sched­ule, she ex­plained, changes every two weeks.

The di­rec­tor said once the un­der­tak­ers col­lect the body, they dri­ve straight to the fu­ner­al home, with no stops. The po­lice will then vis­it the fu­ner­al home and es­cort the un­der­tak­ers to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, where the bod­ies are swabbed for COVID-19.

If the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) de­ter­mines that the in­di­vid­ual is COVID-pos­i­tive, no au­top­sies are done on the body. How­ev­er, it the body is cleared of COVID, the po­lice es­corts the body back to Foren­sics for the au­top­sy.

The fam­i­ly is con­tact­ed be­fore the au­top­sy and giv­en the re­sults af­ter it is com­plet­ed. Once this is done, the body is tak­en back to the fu­ner­al home and prepa­ra­tions for the ser­vice be­gin.