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Friday, February 28, 2025

Nurses want high-risk ward following hospital murder

by

Rhondor Dowlat-Rostant
1919 days ago
20191128
A nurse speaks to a SWAT security guard at the entrance to Ward 3 at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital yesterday.

A nurse speaks to a SWAT security guard at the entrance to Ward 3 at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital yesterday.

Sharlene Rampersad

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?”


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