RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

A man, who po­lice said was part of a plot to mur­der Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan and mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, was killed dur­ing a dur­ing po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing.

The sus­pect’s girl­friend was al­so fa­tal­ly shot.

The dead cou­ple was iden­ti­fied as An­tho­ny ‘Bago’ St Louis, 27, and Na­tal­ie Alexan­der. Po­lice al­so re­port­ed that St Louis used Alexan­der as a shield dur­ing the shoot­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 5.30 am yes­ter­day, po­lice of­fi­cers fol­low­ing up on the re­port to kill the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er, went to the home of St Louis, in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas.

The re­port said as the po­lice at­tempt­ed to en­ter and search the house they were shot at.

The of­fi­cers re­turned fire hit­ting St Louis and Alexan­der. They re­port­ed­ly re­cov­ered a firearm.

In an in­ter­view af­ter in­ci­dent, Pul­chan said he was not both­ered much.

Asked if he will be in­creas­ing his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail he replied: “Not re­al­ly, I’m good.”

He said, “Life and death is con­firmed by God. I have faith in my God and be­lieve in my God. I be­lieve in the Right­eous thing. I try my best to be a Right­eous man and do my best to do every­thing to the best of my abil­i­ty and serve my coun­try and serve my peo­ple and lead my of­fi­cers. So, I can­not say what’s on a man’s mind and what he would like to do but I won’t be both­ered by that that much.”

Rel­a­tives of the cou­ple have ques­tioned why the po­lice took Alexan­der’s daugh­ter out of the house in­to their cus­tody af­ter her moth­er and St Louis were killed.

For most of the day yes­ter­day, Alexan­der’s moth­er and sis­ter were try­ing to lo­cate the child. The rel­a­tives said they want the child in their car rather that in their care of the po­lice or State.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia un­der strict anonymi­ty, a rel­a­tive said the child was the on­ly sur­viv­ing eye­wit­ness and is wor­ried about her wel­fare.

Mean­while, neigh­bours said they nev­er knew that there were po­lice in the area as they saw no blue flash­ing lights or even voic­es iden­ti­fy­ing them as po­lice.

One neigh­bour, who al­so spoke un­der strict anonymi­ty, said: “We heard a com­mo­tion in the form of voic­es so it sound­ed as though the po­lice had al­ready en­tered the house and there was talk go­ing on. Then we heard four gun­shots like ‘Po, po’ then a lit­tle pause then ‘Po, po’. Then af­ter that we heard about eight rapid shots ring out. That was it when we came out we re­alised what hap­pened and saw the po­lice.”

St Louis’ friends re­mained baf­fled as to why po­lice killed him and his girl­friend.

When told about the con­spir­a­tor the­o­ry al­leged by the po­lice, St Louis’ friends were very sur­prised, even his rel­a­tives.

His rel­a­tive said St Louis was ar­rest­ed and charged along with oth­ers a few years ago for at­tempt­ed mur­der and added that two years ago he was freed.

“So, he was nev­er con­vict­ed for any crime and he was nev­er charged for any oth­er of­fence like drugs or firearms and what the po­lice al­leg­ing him as a con­spir­a­tor is sur­pris­ing be­cause to do some­thing like that you would have to have mon­ey which he didn’t have and he lived a very hum­ble life in a di­lap­i­dat­ed house with his girl­friend and her daugh­ter,” St Louis’ rel­a­tive said.

The rel­a­tive al­so said that St Louis was known to be very vo­cal about in­jus­tice and would be the first one to block roads, light fires and protest, even talk to the me­dia.

Rel­a­tives of the cou­ple said they will fight for jus­tice and need­ed an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion done by David West and his team at the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty.

Rel­a­tives are ex­pect­ed to lodge of­fi­cial com­plaints at the PCA be­fore the end of the week.