Hours af­ter eight po­lice of­fi­cers ap­peared in court yes­ter­day, charged with killing three Mor­vant men back in 2020, mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty qui­et­ly gave thanks as they said jus­tice was be­gin­ning to be served.

Joel Ja­cobs, Noel Di­a­mond and Is­rael Moses Clin­ton were al­leged­ly killed by po­lice at Sec­ond Cale­do­nia on June 27.

A fe­male res­i­dent yes­ter­day said, “The com­mu­ni­ty would be feel­ing much bet­ter that some sort of jus­tice has been hap­pen­ing.”

Com­mend­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), she con­tin­ued, “We are see­ing progress in the po­lice ser­vice and I hope with this in­ci­dent here…that we could see more of this hap­pen­ing and it not just go­ing un­der the car­pet.”

She said it was time that rel­a­tives of oth­er peo­ple al­leged­ly killed by po­lice of­fi­cers could feel the same sense of sat­is­fac­tion as those of the three Mor­vant men.

Re­quest­ing anonymi­ty, she said, “We thank the TTPS for do­ing this part of the job.

“I hope oth­ers can feel the same and safe to come out and speak and give them some sort of in­for­ma­tion they would like to know.”

Emerg­ing from her house with a stick in her hand to ward off the stray dogs fre­quent­ing the track lead­ing to her mod­est dwelling, which is ob­scured by tall grass and bush­es, the moth­er of Noel Di­a­mond, Priscil­la Brooks, de­clared, “I felt re­lief be­cause that (in­ci­dent) have an im­pact on me.”

Brooks re­vealed that even read­ing the pa­per and lis­ten­ing to me­dia re­ports dai­ly con­tin­ued to trig­ger pan­ic at­tacks, adding she is nev­er far from a ner­vous break­down.

She de­scribed the last two years with­out her son in one word, “Tor­ture!”

“He used to do every­thing for me you know, every­thing. And when I say tor­ture, es­pe­cial­ly every time rain falling … he go come and say ‘Mum’…he would go out the road and get my pa­pers, get every­thing.

“Them don’t know what they do by tak­ing away my son from me you know.”

She said Di­a­mond had been in an ac­ci­dent when he was younger and had been ren­dered per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled.

Brooks de­fend­ed her de­ceased child as she re­it­er­at­ed, “My son wasn’t no gang­ster.”

Brooks said she is sure jus­tice will be served in this in­stance.

Echo­ing the con­fi­dence of his neigh­bours that jus­tice was be­ing served, Ster­ling Ja­cobs, the fa­ther of Joel Ja­cobs, said, “I be­lieved this would have tak­en place.”

As he praised in­ves­ti­ga­tor Supt Ab­bott for do­ing “a mag­nif­i­cent job,” Ja­cobs said it had re­stored his faith in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in the carpark of the St Clair Med­ical Hos­pi­tal, where his wife Car­ol had been tak­en for treat­ment af­ter falling ill with chest pains at work, Ja­cobs said he had been elat­ed with the news of the charges.

De­spite this, he said, “This can­not re­al­ly bring back our son’s life.”

Hop­ing his wife re­cov­ers soon, he agreed the lat­est de­vel­op­ment could have tak­en a toll on her health.

How­ev­er, for Ja­cobs, it is not about vengeance.

“Is not that we want re­venge. What we want is jus­tice so that these things do not con­tin­ue in our beau­ti­ful land of Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause it has been go­ing quite a while and be­cause of what tran­spired with the cam­eras, we are say­ing that we are get­ting jus­tice,” Ja­cobs stat­ed.

He said the past two years have been dif­fi­cult for them as par­ents.

“Our on­ly son is not here any­more and his life was snuffed out. It was not easy.”

He said his wife had to seek med­ical at­ten­tion sev­er­al times in the past two years as a re­sult.

Ja­cobs too com­mend­ed the TTPS for do­ing due dili­gence in the mat­ter.

Of­fi­cers re­mand­ed to Gold­en Grove

The eight po­lice of­fi­cers charged with killing Joel Ja­cobs, Noel Di­a­mond and Is­rael Moses Clin­ton in Mor­vant on June 27, 2020 - yes­ter­day ap­peared in court and were re­mand­ed to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Gold­en Grove.

Sher­win Bap­tiste, Joseph Solomon, Vaughn St Cyr, Col­in Fur­longe, Kerneal Mo­hammed, Mark Lewis, Sean Lord and Charles Bu­dri ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Mag­is­trate Bri­an Dabideen in the Port-of-Spain Four B Court.

Bap­tiste, Solomon, St Cyr, Fur­longe and Mo­hammed were rep­re­sent­ed by Is­rael Khan, SC, along with a team which in­clud­ed Ul­ric Sker­ritt, James Caruth, Talia Brooks and Ar­ris­sa Ma­haraj.

Lewis was rep­re­sent­ed by Mario Mer­ritt, while Sean Lord was rep­re­sent­ed by John Heath and a du­ty coun­sel ap­peared on be­half of Bu­dri.

The charges read to the eight al­leged that on June 27, 2020, to­geth­er with oth­ers at Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, they mur­dered the three men.

The com­plaint re­quest­ed one week to pro­vide a sum­ma­ry of ev­i­dence to de­fence coun­sel, while Khan chal­lenged the pros­e­cu­tion to in­di­cate if “oth­er per­sons” in­volved in the in­ci­dent would be charged.

The pros­e­cu­tor in­formed the court that the in­struc­tions to charge the eight were on­ly re­ceived from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on Mon­day night and as such, he could not say if any­one else would be held in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to Au­gust 16.