Sacha Wil­son

A nor­mal work­ing day turned dead­ly for a 33-year-old jew­el­ry store work­er af­ter he was shot dur­ing a rob­bery at his work­place on High Street, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day morn­ing. As the body of Andy Ho­sein lay on the pave­ment in front of Ke­tan Jew­ellers, a crowd of peo­ple gath­ered, many ex­press­ing shock over the brazen rob­bery and mur­der.

The rob­bers es­caped with an undis­closed quan­ti­ty of jew­el­ry. How­ev­er, a sus­pect was ar­rest­ed and the al­leged get­away car re­cov­ered in La Ro­maine.

Andy Alberto Hosein

Short­ly be­fore 11 am, Ho­sein was stand­ing at the door­way en­sur­ing that cus­tomers were san­i­tized be­fore they en­tered Ke­tan Jew­ellers. One sus­pect walked up to him and pushed him in­to the store while the three oth­ers went in. They pulled out ham­mers and be­gan smash­ing the show­case.

One cus­tomer ran out of the store bounc­ing in­to Ho­sein, who al­so turned to run. How­ev­er, one of the sus­pects shot him in the back. Ho­sein's rel­a­tives were in­con­solable. Ho­sein's broth­er said he had dual cit­i­zen­ship here and in Venezuela. He said his broth­er be­gan work­ing at the store in No­vem­ber.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh who was at the scene plead­ed with the TTPS to be more vig­i­lance as crime was "now tak­ing place on our very doorsteps of San Fer­nan­do." Ex­press­ing con­do­lences to Ho­sein's fam­i­ly, Singh said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was al­ready un­der tremen­dous stress due to the pan­dem­ic and they now have to deal with the crime es­ca­la­tion.

Ag Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent of the South­ern Di­vi­sion has ques­tions to an­swer as to the pres­ence, or lack there­of, of po­lice foot pa­trols. How­ev­er, he said the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent in­formed him that near­ly 85 of­fi­cers in the di­vi­sion is on quar­an­tine, 22 of whom are at­tached to the San Fer­nan­do sta­tion. "That is no ex­cuse for what hap­pen and the lack of foot pa­trol be­cause there is con­tin­gency plan­ning by all di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders and on this oc­ca­sion the con­tin­gency plan did not kick in the way it should, so per­sons would have some se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer," he said.

How­ev­er, he said mo­bile pa­trol was ac­tive and when the of­fi­cers locked down San Fer­nan­do they in­ter­cept­ed the al­leged get­away ve­hi­cle and ar­rest­ed a sus­pect from La Ro­maine.

"We want to give the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty the as­sur­ance we are on our game and we will en­sure that these cul­prits are brought to jus­tice."

Ja­cob al­so ap­pealed to peo­ple in­volved in il­le­gal protests, il­le­gal demon­stra­tions and un­nec­es­sary par­ties who are flout­ing the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions to stop. He said po­lice of­fi­cers who re­spond to these ac­tiv­i­ties are be­ing ex­posed to COVID-19. "It is hav­ing a se­ri­ous ef­fect on the po­lice de­part­ment in re­la­tion to the num­ber of of­fi­cers who at times are con­tract­ing COVID-19." He said when this hap­pens, there is a spi­ral ef­fect in how the po­lice are able to car­ry out their work.

"So it is af­fect­ing every­body. So we are ask­ing per­sons again to de­sist be­cause at the end of the day it do af­fect the di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders, the way how they man­age and op­er­a­tionalise their di­vi­sion." Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion Three are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.