An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The Massy Stores branch at French Street, Wood­brook, was closed un­til noon yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing a re­port­ed break-in and the dis­cov­ery of a body in the va­cant lot ad­ja­cent to the out­let.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the two in­ci­dents were linked, as they be­lieve the five sus­pects who broke in­to the gro­cery killed a home­less man liv­ing on the ad­ja­cent aban­doned com­pound be­fore us­ing the area to gain ac­cess to the build­ing.

Re­ports in­di­cate that two of­fi­cers at­tached to Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty were alert­ed by their Con­trol De­part­ment that sev­er­al men had bro­ken in­to the Massy Stores ware­house at French Street, Wood­brook.

Af­ter con­tact­ing the 999 Emer­gency Com­mand Cen­tre, the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers were met by po­lice of­fi­cers who car­ried out checks and dis­cov­ered a hole in the north­ern wall of the ware­house.

Dur­ing checks of the com­pound, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered sev­er­al box­es con­tain­ing bot­tles of wine scat­tered on the ground.

Fur­ther search­es led to the dis­cov­ery of the body of an East In­di­an man ly­ing be­neath an open, makeshift wood­en struc­ture.

The vic­tim was lat­er iden­ti­fied as Pe­ter Seemu­n­gal.

Res­i­dents in the area said Seemu­n­gal was home­less and had been stay­ing on the aban­doned com­pound.

Po­lice dis­cov­ered that Seemu­n­gal’s hands were tied be­hind his back and his feet were bound. A black jer­sey was wrapped around his neck, and in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve it was used to stran­gle him, as no gun­shot or stab wounds were ob­served on the body.

The Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer vis­it­ed the scene and or­dered that the body be re­moved pend­ing an au­top­sy.

As po­lice processed the break-in scene, Massy Stores of­fi­cials con­duct­ed an in­ven­to­ry to de­ter­mine what had been stolen and the val­ue of the items.

Cus­tomers were redi­rect­ed to the com­pa­ny’s branch­es in St Ann’s and Mar­aval.

While these ac­tiv­i­ties were on­go­ing, po­lice re­ceived a re­port that a white L200 van, which was re­port­ed­ly seen leav­ing the aban­doned com­pound with ap­prox­i­mate­ly five sus­pects on board, had been spot­ted in Port-of-Spain.

Of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and the Port-of-Spain Task Force (POSTF) pur­sued the van through the cap­i­tal and in­to the Laven­tille area.

The ve­hi­cle was lat­er found aban­doned at Kerr Trace, Laven­tille, and sub­se­quent­ly towed to the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion.

No one has been ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.