Derek Achong and

Jensen La Vende

Pros­e­cu­tors from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) were ab­sent from court yes­ter­day and will al­so be miss­ing to­day, as they are said to be so trau­ma­tised by the bru­tal mur­der of for­mer col­league, spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor, that they are fear­ful for their own lives and un­able to fo­cus on work.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that af­ter Hec­tor was mur­dered af­ter leav­ing the Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist Church at Stan­more Av­enue in Port-of-Spain on Tues­day night, DPP Roger Gas­pard wrote to Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie high­light­ing the emo­tion­al state of his col­leagues.

In the cor­re­spon­dence, which was shared with staff at the DPP’s Of­fice and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Gas­pard in­formed Archie that his staff would be ab­sent from courts across T&T for the re­main­der of this week, as they (pros­e­cu­tors) were in a “se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised state” and fear­ful for their lives.

Gas­pard al­so in­di­cat­ed that he is ex­pect­ed to host a staff meet­ing to­day to dis­cuss their height­ened se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and find so­lu­tions.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Gas­pard de­clined to com­ment un­til af­ter the meet­ing.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, how­ev­er, a pros­e­cu­tor, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said they were deeply trou­bled by Hec­tor’s death.

“We are cry­ing not on­ly be­cause he died but al­so be­cause it means one day it could be us,” the pros­e­cu­tor said.

The pros­e­cu­tor said some col­leagues were cop­ing bet­ter than oth­ers, but not­ed, “I have one col­league who is just ly­ing on her couch cry­ing ... I my­self have not slept a wink since then, just an hour here or there.

“It shook up every­body. Every­one was hys­ter­i­cal with the news.”

While ad­mit­ting to not hav­ing worked with Hec­tor dur­ing his stint at the DPP’s Of­fice, the pros­e­cu­tor in­ter­act­ed with Hec­tor when he host­ed a train­ing ses­sion in con­junc­tion with Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) of­fi­cials, where he (Hec­tor) pre­vi­ous­ly worked be­fore go­ing in­to pri­vate prac­tice. “He was pleas­ant and a re­al nice fel­la ... There was no shad­ow over him,” the pros­e­cu­tor said.

While at­tor­neys have ac­cept­ed there was no ev­i­dence yet to prove Hec­tor was tar­get­ed due to his role as a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor, the source said his mur­der still high­light­ed their se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

Al­though many of the over 120 pros­e­cu­tors as­signed to the DPP’s Of­fice are li­censed firearm hold­ers like Hec­tor, the source said this is in­suf­fi­cient to guar­an­tee their safe­ty.

“The FUL could not help. It was clear­ly a tac­ti­cal ex­e­cu­tion. If Hec­tor had an es­cort it would have been a de­ter­rent,” the source not­ed.

The safe­ty con­cerns raised over their Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain site was again raised.

“We are not like oth­er State bod­ies. We have to have our Christ­mas par­ty in the car park. Any­one could pass and spray down the place with bul­lets.”

High­light­ing that DPP Gas­pard was al­so pre­vi­ous­ly crit­i­cised for re­fus­ing to move to a build­ing at the cor­ner of Park and Hen­ry Streets in Port-of-Spain due to its prox­im­i­ty to com­mu­ni­ties in east Port-of-Spain con­trolled by gangs, the pros­e­cu­tor said, “He (DPP) was right. It was in the mid­dle of two gangs.”

The build­ing was rent­ed and out­fit­ted by Gov­ern­ment at a cost of $50 mil­lion but af­ter the DPP re­fused to move, the Gov­ern­ment sourced an old First Cit­i­zens bank branch on St Vin­cent for the re­lo­ca­tion of the of­fice.

The source al­so point­ed out that sev­er­al fe­male col­leagues are mar­ried to po­lice of­fi­cers.

“You think it is be­cause they are at­tract­ed to the uni­form? Yes, but, it is be­cause they feel safer,” the source said, not­ing safe­ty con­cerns con­tributed to the high turnover of staff at the DPP’s Of­fice.

The source said they had been ad­vo­cat­ing for all pros­e­cu­tors to re­ceive se­cu­ri­ty de­tails that are nor­mal­ly on­ly af­ford­ed to se­nior mem­bers of the de­part­ment and a risk al­lowance.

LATT wants se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures for ju­di­cial of­fi­cers

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) sug­gest­ed that Hec­tor’s mur­der, one day af­ter a State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared, high­light­ed the ur­gent need for se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures for all pros­e­cu­tors and ju­di­cial of­fi­cers in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

LATT said the ob­jec­tives of the SoE “can­not be re­alised with­out the fear­less ef­forts of the le­gal and ju­di­cial of­fi­cers who are en­gaged in the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of vi­o­lent of­fend­ers.”

The re­lease al­so “round­ly con­demned and de­plored” the bru­tal mur­der of Hec­tor, who it said was a well-re­spect­ed mem­ber of the le­gal pro­fes­sion and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Lawyers de­ny client linked to killing

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing a man who was pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cused of gang ac­tiv­i­ty and is be­ing linked to Hec­tor’s killing, say their client was freed of the charge be­cause of Hec­tor’s fair­ness and in­tegri­ty.

In a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day, at­tor­neys Pamela El­der and Rus­sell Warn­er said Hec­tor con­duct­ed the pros­e­cu­tion of client Calvin “Tyson” Lee as a true min­is­ter of jus­tice.

There were re­ports that Hec­tor’s killing was some­how linked to him pros­e­cut­ing Lee on charges of be­ing a gang leader. Lee was dis­charged on Sep­tem­ber 23 last year for want of pros­e­cu­tion.

There were al­so so­cial me­dia re­ports of a “strange man” at the church talk­ing and tex­ting and seen walk­ing in the di­rec­tion of Hec­tor be­fore he was killed. The “strange man” turned out to be lo­cal mu­sic artiste Lou Lyons of the band Free­town Col­lec­tive.

In a so­cial me­dia post, af­ter his pic­ture be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing with a re­quest for in­for­ma­tion about him, Lyons said he was not a sus­pect.

“I am Lou Lyons of the band Free­town Col­lec­tive. This is my im­age and like­ness be­ing shared with er­ro­neous and false in­for­ma­tion. I’m not a sus­pect in any on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Please cease and de­sist from fur­ther dis­sem­i­na­tion,” Lyons post­ed.