KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

It was like old wounds re­open­ing as fam­i­ly and friends of Ker­ron “Fin­gers” Ec­cles, Abi­gail John­son, and Alana Dun­can tried to make sense of Fri­day’s High Court ver­dict that ac­quit­ted six of­fi­cers of killing the trio back in 2011.

Some Moru­ga res­i­dents and fam­i­ly mem­bers fought to hold back their anger and tears.

When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed Ec­cles’ home in St Mary’s Vil­lage yes­ter­day, his moth­er, Geral­dine, had not slept or eat­en much since Fri­day morn­ing. She fol­lowed the case from in­cep­tion, and she and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers at­tend­ed the hear­ings and found the State had a good case against Sgt Khem­raj Sa­hadeo and con­sta­bles Re­nal­do Re­viero, Glenn Singh, Roger Nicholas, Safraz Ju­man, and An­to­nio Ra­madin. But their con­fi­dence shat­tered with­in min­utes when a 12-mem­ber ju­ry found each of­fi­cer not guilty.

“I was ex­pect­ing a good ver­dict and vic­to­ry be­cause they had enough ev­i­dence to prove what took place,” Geral­dine said.

She re­called see­ing many po­lice of­fi­cers in the court on Fri­day, and pre­sid­ing judge, Jus­tice Car­la An­toine-Browne ad­vised those in the pub­lic gallery to leave the room if they could not con­tain their emo­tions. Yet, she stayed, ex­pect­ing a guilty ver­dict. As the ju­ry chair­man read not-guilty ver­dicts to each of­fi­cer, she and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers dev­as­tat­ed by the out­come be­gan walk­ing out.

“Six po­lice of­fi­cers and no­body found them guilty, none ... ? It is hard. It is hard, and there was ev­i­dence to show what they did.

KERRON ECCLES

“My son was not dead. My son was alive. They wil­ful­ly killed him. They wil­ful­ly mur­dered him,” Geral­dine said break­ing down in tears.

Geral­dine said Ec­cles’ chil­dren were too young to un­der­stand what hap­pened when their fa­ther died, but they even­tu­al­ly found out. Now Tyric is en­raged that his fa­ther’s killing was ruled law­ful.

She wor­ries that tak­ing fur­ther ac­tion could en­dan­ger her fam­i­ly’s lives as the of­fi­cers are now free. 

Po­lice fa­tal­ly shot Ec­cles, 29, John­son, 20, and Dun­can, 27, when they in­ter­cept­ed their car in Bar­rack­pore around 9 pm on Ju­ly 22, 2011.

The of­fi­cers at­tached to the San Fer­nan­do Rob­bery Squad al­leged that oc­cu­pants opened fire, and they shot back, killing the three friends.

One of the of­fi­cers in­volved, WPC Nicole Clement, tes­ti­fied that two of the friends sur­vived the shoot­ing. Clement, who turned state wit­ness, said the vic­tims were tak­en to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion and ex­e­cut­ed. How­ev­er, Clement re­fused to tes­ti­fy dur­ing the tri­al.

Ec­cles’ old­er broth­er, Ger­ald, said the ver­dict was un­fair, and the fam­i­ly is con­tem­plat­ing their next le­gal move. Ger­ald said through­out the hear­ings, there was ev­i­dence point­ing to wrong­do­ing by the of­fi­cer, so it was hard to un­der­stand how a ju­ry de­ter­mined the of­fi­cers were not guilty.

“We just have to con­tin­ue with how dai­ly life goes. It is just that you can­not have any trust in the po­lice and the sys­tem in Trinidad. You can­not have any con­fi­dence in them be­cause any­thing hap­pens, it is just get­ting swept away un­der the car­pet, and it is plain to see what tran­spired yes­ter­day (Fri­day) in the court,” Ger­ald said.

He said on the day of the killings, the of­fi­cers did not do the job they swore to do. There­fore, he be­lieves the Po­lice Ser­vice should not re­in­state the of­fi­cers.

Kiefer McIn­tosh, a res­i­dent, re­mem­bered hang­ing out with Ec­cles, John­son and Dun­can at a bar in St Mary’s be­fore they left to get bar­be­cue meals in Bar­rack­pore. Some­one called him min­utes lat­er and in­formed him of the shoot­ing. By the time he and oth­ers ar­rived at Gun­ness Trace and saw the bul­let-rid­dled car, one friend was al­ready dead, but two were alive. He said it was puz­zling when they reached the Princes Town Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty to hear all three were dead.

McIn­tosh was at home on Fri­day when he saw the news that the High Court freed six of­fi­cers re­spon­si­ble for his friends’ deaths. He was con­fused af­ter hear­ing there was good ev­i­dence to con­vict the of­fi­cers.

“I was just shocked. I did not be­lieve it. I looked at the phone and said, ‘Nah! I do not be­lieve that.’ I said, ‘No, that can­not be so be­cause they said they have all the ev­i­dence.’ They had video of the shoot­ing, every­thing, and they still got off,” McIn­tosh said.

As the com­mu­ni­ty tries to fig­ure out what went wrong in the court, McIn­tosh said every­body be­lieves the ver­dict is un­be­liev­able and that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is “messed up”.

He said the lack of jus­tice was why some peo­ple take mat­ters in­to their own hands and by­pass the courts.