Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville.co.tt

A 48-year-old sol­dier re­mains in po­lice cus­tody, as Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ue their en­quiry in­to the mur­ders of Cal­i­da Scham­ber and her moth­er Carmeli­ta De Leon ear­li­er this week.

Scham­ber, 43, and De Leon, 66, were gunned down at their Re­nais­sance at Shore­lands, Glen­coe home on Tues­day morn­ing by a man who jumped over the wall of the res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty.

The sus­pect, who is a war­rant of­fi­cer II in the Reg­i­ment, was ar­rest­ed in a forest­ed part of Blan­chisseuse Road, Ari­ma, hours af­ter the at­tack.

Sources said the sol­dier re­mained in cus­tody at a Port-of -Spain po­lice sta­tion up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, as of­fi­cers from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion I con­tin­ued to col­lect state­ments and es­tab­lish a time­line on what tran­spired.

One source said of­fi­cers had not yet met with the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) but ex­pect­ed them to have a meet­ing some­time over this week­end to dis­cuss charges.

The source al­so not­ed that sev­er­al “loose ends” in the en­quiry were be­ing worked on, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of the mur­der weapon and how it was sourced.

Sev­er­al so­cial me­dia out­lets have re­port­ed that the sus­pect was charged with at least sev­en of­fences in De­cem­ber, in­clud­ing as­sault oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm, breach­ing a pro­tec­tion or­der and house­break­ing with in­tent.

Guardian Me­dia sent sev­er­al ques­tions to the TTPS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit on Wednes­day on whether this was true but had re­ceived no feed­back up to press time last night.

Fur­ther claims on so­cial me­dia pur­port­ed that the sol­dier was con­fined to bar­racks and was to be placed un­der the su­per­vi­sion of a sergeant ma­jor to whom he had to re­port to dai­ly as part of his bail con­di­tions.

How­ev­er, these con­di­tions were changed, as the sus­pect was al­lowed to stay at a rel­a­tive’s house in D’Abadie.

At­tempts to con­firm this with the TT Reg­i­ment since Wednes­day were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.

For­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, said acts of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence can be mit­i­gat­ed against with prop­er plan­ning and strate­gies.

Re­fer­ring to con­sul­ta­tions and train­ing from the New York Po­lice De­part­ment (NYPD) for of­fi­cers of the TTPS Gen­der Based Vi­o­lence Unit (GB­VU) and re­stric­tions to firearms to peo­ple who had re­strain­ing or­ders against them that were in­tro­duced dur­ing his tenure as com­mis­sion­er, Grif­fith said such pro­grammes made a dif­fer­ence in pre­vent­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

“Un­less these plans, poli­cies, and op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures are re­in­stat­ed, we re­gret­tably face a sub­stan­tial­ly in­creased risk for vic­tims of do­mes­tic and gen­der-based vi­o­lence,” Grif­fith said.