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Saturday, March 15, 2025

PCA takes evidence from youngest survivor of police shooting

by

Joshua Seemungal
973 days ago
20220715
Attorney Om Lalla goes to the PCA office with one of the survivors of the police involved shooting and his mother at Tower D Waterfront, International Waterfront Complex, Wrightson Road, Port of Spain yesterday.

Attorney Om Lalla goes to the PCA office with one of the survivors of the police involved shooting and his mother at Tower D Waterfront, International Waterfront Complex, Wrightson Road, Port of Spain yesterday.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty yes­ter­day of­fi­cial­ly be­gan an­oth­er phase of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fa­tal Ju­ly 2 po­lice shoot­ing of three young men in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, by in­ter­view­ing one of the sur­vivors of the in­ci­dent.

The youngest sur­vivor, a 15-year-old who can­not be named be­cause he’s a mi­nor, gave a re­port to the PCA with his par­ents and at­tor­ney Om Lal­la by his side.

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, Lal­la, ac­com­pa­nied by ju­nior at­tor­ney Il­isha Maner­ikar, ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the PCA’s abil­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate fair­ly and thor­ough­ly.

He said he was heart­ened to hear that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) re­port in­to the shoot­ing was al­so ex­pect­ed to be sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard short­ly as well.

“It is im­por­tant that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and those in­volved deal with this mat­ter swift­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble, be­cause it has sparked not on­ly out­rage in the com­mu­ni­ty but in the coun­try about how this mat­ter has been per­ceived. The ev­i­dence and the as­sess­ment of the ev­i­dence is go­ing to be crit­i­cal to put peo­ple’s fears and con­cerns to rest. And what we’ve learned in this mat­ter, is these mat­ters have to be man­aged very quick­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly by the po­lice,” Lal­la said.

“You have to build con­fi­dence and trust in the pub­lic if you want to have mat­ters of this na­ture dealt with in the court of pub­lic opin­ion and oth­er­wise, so that you get the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic.”

Ac­cord­ing to Lal­la, his client was left se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised by the shoot­ing.

He lament­ed that the teenag­er, who was shot in his arm, has not been of­fered more sup­port by the au­thor­i­ties.

“I have writ­ten to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for the in­ter­ven­tion of some sort of as­sis­tance from the Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit, but to date no one has reached out. There’s been no ef­fort to pro­vide any coun­selling or sup­port to him what­so­ev­er. And the fam­i­ly is not a fam­i­ly of means that they could af­ford to get coun­selling. They, in fact, don’t even know where to go,” the at­tor­ney said.

“Un­til this mat­ter is com­plet­ed, this young man, who is not guilty or who has not been charged with any crime, de­serves to be treat­ed fair­ly by the state and pro­vid­ed with what­ev­er fa­cil­i­ties can be af­ford­ed to him as a vic­tim of a crime.”

Lal­la al­so made an ap­peal for ef­fec­tive mea­sures to be put in place, from the top down, to ag­gres­sive­ly deal with in­ci­dents of this na­ture sort holis­ti­cal­ly.

He said it is al­so im­per­a­tive that peo­ple have full con­fi­dence in the sys­tem’s abil­i­ty to de­liv­er jus­tice.

On Ju­ly 2, six young men re­port­ed­ly left a par­ty in Diego Mar­tin in a ve­hi­cle. On the dri­ve home, how­ev­er, they were pur­sued by po­lice of­fi­cers. Dur­ing the pur­suit, the ve­hi­cle crashed in­to Re­pub­lic Bank along In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

Po­lice of­fi­cers shot at them af­ter the ve­hi­cle crashed, killing 21-year-old Fa­bi­en Richards; 17-year-old Isa­iah Roberts and 17-year-old Leonar­do Willaims. The ve­hi­cle’s three oth­er oc­cu­pants, in­clud­ing a 15-year-old, were sub­se­quent­ly re­leased with­out charge.

The po­lice re­port claimed that some­one in the ve­hi­cle shot at them, while the sur­vivors claimed that no one in the ve­hi­cle was armed. How­ev­er, one of them did ad­mit to hav­ing a small flip knife in the car.


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