Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A rel­a­tive of mur­dered con­struc­tion work­er Kevin Jack says he left the safe­ty of his home af­ter he was promised cash by some­one he knew.

Jack, 43, was shot dead at Nel­son Street Plan­nings, Port-of-Spain, at around 3 pm on Tues­day.

Of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Task Force re­ceived a re­port of a body on the sec­ond stair­case of Build­ing 38-41. They re­spond­ed and found Jack’s body.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Ltd at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, one of Jack’s rel­a­tives said peo­ple in the neigh­bour­hood re­mem­bered him speak­ing on the phone to some­one who promised to meet him and give him mon­ey.

She said she re­mem­bered hear­ing Jack speak­ing with some­one on the phone since last week but did not med­dle in the con­ver­sa­tion.

“He was look­ing for a lit­tle mon­ey. Some­body told him to come out for some mon­ey as far as the oth­er peo­ple in the build­ing heard him talk­ing on his phone. Since Fri­day he had been talk­ing to some­body, but he was re­al­ly se­cre­tive. He nev­er re­al­ly told me much to say who he was deal­ing up with,” she said.

“I’m not the kind of per­son to lis­ten to your con­ver­sa­tion be­cause if it’s not about me or it’s not re­lat­ed to me, it’s not my busi­ness, so I won’t both­er to lis­ten.”

The rel­a­tive said Jack went out to col­lect the mon­ey for his fam­i­ly as they did not have a lot of cash over the week­end.

She said Jack worked as a con­struc­tion work­er and was look­ing for­ward to at­tend­ing an ex­cur­sion with his com­mon-law wife for his birth­day on Sep­tem­ber 12 .

Asked if she knew why any­one want­ed to hurt Jack, the rel­a­tive said she knew him to be a friend­ly, well-liked per­son in the com­mu­ni­ty and could not think of any mo­tive for his killing.

She said, “He wasn’t on any bad­ness. If he was on that in a past life, that’s not the per­son that I know. The per­son that I saw is a pray­ing man. He was in­to bad­ness be­fore. He wasn’t on that when I met him.”

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.