KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A 32-year-old po­lice of­fi­cer was found dead in a sus­pect­ed hang­ing at his Princes Town home on Tues­day morn­ing.

He has been iden­ti­fied as Ke­ston Steele, who was last at­tached to the St Mary’s Po­lice Sta­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, of­fi­cers from the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion re­spond­ed to in­for­ma­tion re­ceived around 10.41 am on Wednes­day at a house along St Julien Road.

Up­on ar­rival, of­fi­cers met the of­fi­cer’s 21-year-old broth­er, who re­port­ed that he had gone in search of Steele around 10.20 am but was un­able to lo­cate him in­side the house.

He said he then made checks around the prop­er­ty and went to the side, where he dis­cov­ered Steele’s body hang­ing from a tree.

Dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer Dr Balkissoon lat­er vis­it­ed the scene, ex­am­ined the body and pro­nounced death. She or­dered its re­moval to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary, where it is be­ing kept pend­ing a post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors processed the area, while sev­er­al se­nior of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing ASP Chu­lan, In­sp Charles, Sgt Singh, PC Sama­roo, PC Kissoon and PC Mo­hammed and of­fi­cers from the St Mary’s and Princes Town po­lice vis­it­ed the scene.

Po­lice al­so con­duct­ed en­quiries at the of­fi­cer’s home, where items of State-is­sued equip­ment linked to the Po­lice Ser­vice and Cadet Force were se­cured as part of on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Any­one ex­pe­ri­enc­ing emo­tion­al dis­tress is en­cour­aged to seek sup­port through avail­able men­tal health ser­vices or hot­lines, in­clud­ing 800 – COPE (2673), 800-5588, 1868 384-4722, 800-4321, or speak with a trust­ed in­di­vid­ual.