Derek Achong

A lit­tle over five years af­ter mur­dered Japan­ese pan­nist Asa­mi Na­gakiya’s body was found in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, fol­low­ing Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has of­fi­cial­ly closed the case.

The clo­sure of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion did not end with the ar­rest and charge of a sus­pect, how­ev­er, but rather with the po­lice iden­ti­fy­ing a man who was shot and killed in a rob­bery in late 2016 as the pos­si­ble killer.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the TTPS re­vealed that Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard SC had re­viewed the case file sub­mit­ted by de­tec­tives of the Cold Case Unit on Thurs­day and ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was thor­ough­ly done.

“He (Gas­pard) con­clud­ed that all the ev­i­dence point­ed to one sus­pect, David Allen, who was killed in a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing on De­cem­ber 12th, 2016, in Wood­brook,” the re­lease said.

The re­lease al­so gave de­tails of Allen’s crim­i­nal his­to­ry, not­ing that the 31-year-old from En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, was shot and killed by an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer when he at­tempt­ed to rob Stir Fry King Restau­rant and Casi­no at Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook. Allen al­leged­ly posed as a woman, com­plete with make-up and tight-fit­ted cloth­ing, dur­ing the ill-fat­ed rob­bery at­tempt.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, it was not the first time Allen had used a dis­guise to com­mit a vi­o­lent crime.

In 2004, Allen, then 18, al­so al­leged­ly dis­guised him­self as a va­grant and at­tempt­ed to rob TSTT tech­ni­cian Dar­ryn Baksh as he was leav­ing 51 De­grees night­club on Cipri­ani Boule­vard, Port-of-Spain. Baksh re­sist­ed, was shot in the stom­ach and lat­er died at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In 2012, Allen, who was charged with Baksh’s mur­der, was al­lowed to plead guilty to the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter. The State ac­cept­ed his guilty plea and he was sen­tenced to four years and six months, in ad­di­tion to the eight years he spent await­ing tri­al.

Na­gakiya, 30, an avid steel­pan play­er and a mem­ber of the Nu­trien Sil­ver Stars Steel Or­ches­tra since 2012, had been vis­it­ing T&T for Car­ni­val for al­most a decade be­fore she de­cid­ed to play mas.

When her body was found at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Ash Wednes­day, she was still in her Car­ni­val cos­tume from the band Lega­cy. An au­top­sy re­vealed that she had been stran­gled.

Na­gakiya’s mur­der struck a chord with Russ­ian foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov, who per­formed the au­top­sy and spoke open­ly about the case while do­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Caribbean Youth Sci­ence Fo­rum at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in Au­gust 2017.

Re­veal­ing pic­tures of Na­gakiya’s body, Alexan­drov point­ed out to the stu­dents how he was able to as­sist po­lice in build­ing a pro­file of her killer. He said the marks of vi­o­lence on her neck showed that her at­tack­er was left-hand­ed and bite marks on her cheeks showed that the at­tack­er was miss­ing be­tween four and six front teeth. He claimed the in­for­ma­tion was used to clear the ten sus­pects who were ini­tial­ly de­tained for the crime.