Sascha Wil­son

De­spite the flash­ing blue lights and siren, Cur­tis Har­riot knew the men in a black X-trail that pulled their ve­hi­cle aside on the high­way on Sat­ur­day were not po­lice of­fi­cers.

Har­riot's last words to his friend who was in the dri­ver's seat were, "Why you switch off, that is not po­lice?"

Mo­ments lat­er, 35-year-old Har­riot was shot shot dead. Har­riot and his two friends were in a white Ford Ranger re­turn­ing home af­ter play­ing in a crick­et match, when an X-trail came up be­hind their ve­hi­cle with blue lights and a siren sim­i­lar to ones used by the po­lice.

Think­ing that it was a po­lice ve­hi­cle, the dri­ver pulled on the shoul­der and switched off the ve­hi­cle along the north­bound lane of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion, near the Debe round­about. Two men armed with guns came out the X-trail. One of them, dressed in black tac­ti­cal cloth­ing, walked up to the dri­ver's win­dow and told him to switch off the ve­hi­cle. The gun­man looked in­to the ve­hi­cle, point­ed the gun at Har­riot and fired sev­er­al shots. He then re­turned to the Xtrail.

Har­riot, a con­struc­tion labour­er, died at the scene. Po­lice re­cov­ered sev­en spent 9 mmm cas­ings at the scene.

At Har­riot's White­land home, near Williamsville yes­ter­day, sev­er­al neigh­bours were gath­ered still try­ing to come to terms with his death. His sis­ter, who lives in To­ba­go, de­clined to give her name to re­porters, but said she asked the dri­ver to tell her Har­riot's last words.

"He said my broth­er turn to him and tell him 'why you switch off, that is not po­lice.'"

She added, "I just want­ed to know what my broth­er said if he at least call out and say God for­give me what­ev­er it is, some­thing and he said all he turn and say is that is not po­lice. That is all he say and he say your broth­er bow down his head."

She said the dri­ver told her that the gun­man walked up to the ve­hi­cle, looked her broth­er in the face and "he put the gun in front of him (dri­ver) and shoot my broth­er."

She said jeal­ousy is the on­ly rea­son why some­one would want to kill her broth­er be­cause he was do­ing well and had al­ready built a two-bed­room house which is ful­ly fur­nished.

Lament­ing the amount of mur­ders in the coun­try, she said, "This crime sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try is very ..., it bad, it re­al bad now and hon­est­ly, you will nev­er know how it feel un­til it hit home and it re­al­ly hit home now be­cause every day you watch­ing some­body get mur­dered and I will watch it on news and say oh Fa­ther Lord, a next mur­der, but is when I get the news yes­ter­day that my broth­er get kill on the high­way, that's when I know how oth­er peo­ple does feel when they get the news."

She im­me­di­ate­ly booked a flight and came to Trinidad. Har­riot, who is fond­ly called Bachac, was ex­pect­ing his first ba­by soon. Har­riot's fa­ther, who is al­so named Cur­tis, said he nev­er ex­pect­ed that his son would die in this way. How­ev­er, he said vil­lagers told him that a black Xtrail was seen in the area the night be­fore. The fa­ther said his son played crick­et with sev­er­al clubs and was well liked in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion 3 are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.