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.