The T&T Registered Nurses Association wants a special high-risk ward to be established at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital for injured gang members and their affiliates, to prevent a repeat of Tuesday night’s murder.
Speaking to Guardian Media following several hours of meeting with Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) executive and police, association president Idi Stuart said the environment at the hospital has become too dangerous.
The meetings came after two gunmen walked onto Ward 3 and shot 25-year-old Laventille resident Dejean Broker dead as he lay in his bed around 8.45 pm Tuesday.
Yesterday morning there were several security officers and police stationed at the entrance to the ward, checking visitors with metal detectors.
Stuart said an old building which is being refurbished on the compound can house high-risk patients.
“Currently they are warded throughout the hospital but if you had one area that is secured, you could put the police in that area only as opposed to trying to guard the entire institution,” Stuart said.
The association is also opposed to private security firms being hired to safeguard patients and staff.
Stuart suggested the NWRHA utilise its own security or officers from the National Maintenance Training and Security Company Ltd (MTS) be brought in.
The association’s third recommendation was that the building housing Ward 3 and other wards are sealed off from the outside with only one entry and one exit to allow security officers to properly control who enters the wards.
Hours before his murder, Broker complained to a nurse in the ward about his life being threatened.
Speaking with the Guardian Media yesterday while at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, a relative, who wished not to be identified said Broker was admitted to hospital over the weekend nursing a stab wound to the chest. An injury she said had severed one of his arteries and as a result, had surgery done earlier Tuesday afternoon.
She explained that Broker was at MovieTowne when a fight broke out involving the son of a well-known businessman from Sea Lots. “He jumped into the fight to part it and that was when he was stabbed in the chest.
“At the hospital when he was sent up to the Ward, he called me and told me that he was the only Muslim on the Ward and that it had members from Rasta City…you know how there is an ongoing war between the Muslims and Rastas well that is what happened,” the relative said.
“They had put him on a bed near a window in the Ward and he told me that he had feared for his life because he got threats from a patient there who promised him that he would not live to see the morning,” she added.
Broker’s relative alleged that Broker told her that he told a nurse about the threat and that he wanted for her to move him from the Ward.
“He said to me that the nurse told him that there was nowhere else to move him as there were no beds available. So, he went in for the surgery and was brought up back to the Ward and when he came out of the sedation he was threatened and told that he would not live to see the morning…I got a call later that night of a shooting in Ward 3 and when I do make further checks I realise De Jean was killed.”
The relative said that she strongly believes that if De Jean’s security concerns were taken seriously by hospital officials he would have been alive today.
“They are the ones to be blamed for this on many levels. How can someone be begging to be safe and be told that there are no beds? How can that person escape security and go all the way up to the Ward by the window and shoot? Where was the security? This is a major security and safety breach and I hope that De Jean gets justice because he was supposed to be in a safe place. He was a victim of a stabbing…why wasn’t the police there to protect him while warded?”