An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul

@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of re­tired po­lice of­fi­cer Arkim Bak­er are beg­ging for pri­va­cy to mourn, even as they ac­knowl­edge he had been a friend and bene­fac­tor to many.

Fight­ing back tears as they ar­rived at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives said the burn­ing ques­tion that re­mained fol­low­ing the mur­der of the fa­ther of four was why.

Bak­er, 39, of Quar­ry Road, San Juan, was shot in the chest by a masked gun­man as he stood be­hind the counter at Bob­by’s Bar, Curepe, at­tend­ing to cus­tomers, around 2 am on March 17.

He col­lapsed and lat­er died in­side a stor­age room at the back of the es­tab­lish­ment, as the gun­man es­caped in a wait­ing car that had been parked near the old Bomb news­pa­per com­pound.

Speak­ing hes­i­tat­ing­ly as they were ap­proached by re­porters, a fe­male rel­a­tive said Bak­er had been hard-work­ing, de­pend­able and trust­wor­thy.

Still reel­ing in shock, she said, “Lov­ing, car­ing ... he was a pro­tec­tor to all of us.”

She said, “There are chil­dren he would have as­sist­ed who would have lost their par­ents, whose par­ents would have aban­doned them, and they not go­ing to school ... he would have sent them to school dai­ly. There were peo­ple who would have been hun­gry, and they would have come to him, and he would have al­ways stretched his hand out. He would nev­er have turned away any­body, and we don’t know if that was what caused him his demise.”

Bak­er’s chil­dren, who are all aged 18 and younger, were said to have been shat­tered by the loss.

“They broke our fam­i­ly link,” she said.

A sec­ond woman en­dorsed Bak­er’s gen­er­ous na­ture, say­ing, “It coul­da been his last dol­lar in his pock­et; he would give you and then think about him­self lat­er.”

An at­tempt had been made to kill Bak­er back in No­vem­ber 2024, which the women said had re­sult­ed in them beg­ging him to change his hours of work and to mix up his rou­tine.

But they said his goal had al­ways been to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly, and as a re­sult, he had missed many gath­er­ings.

Bak­er had been em­ployed with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice for 17 years.