DEREK ACHONG

The South Caribbean Con­fer­ence of Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tists has ex­tend­ed sym­pa­thy to mu­si­cian and so­cial jus­tice ac­tivist Lou Lyons for be­ing in­cor­rect­ly im­pli­cat­ed in the mur­der of spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor af­ter at­tend­ing a church ser­vice. 

The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s pres­i­dent pas­tor Leslie Moses did so in a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day.

It came days af­ter Lyons threat­ened le­gal ac­tion over an im­age of him at­tend­ing a ser­vice at Stan­more Av­enue SDA Church in Port-of-Spain be­ing shared af­ter Hec­tor’s mur­der on De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

The im­age of Lyons had an ac­com­pa­ny­ing cap­tion al­leg­ing that he was not known to the con­gre­ga­tion, was seen tex­ting and speak­ing on his cell phone, and was seen walk­ing in the di­rec­tion of Hec­tor when he was shot and killed. 

Moses said, “I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to pub­licly de­nounce the said pub­li­ca­tion and ref­er­ences to Mr Lyons, to sym­pa­thise with him in this dis­tress and fur­ther to re­mind all not on­ly of the need for re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in the pub­li­ca­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­for­ma­tion, but al­so of the need for cour­tesy, com­pas­sion, thought­ful­ness and re­spect for all in so do­ing.” 

Moses de­nied that the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its church were re­spon­si­ble for the ac­tion as he point­ed out that the ser­vice, both Lyons and Hec­tor at­tend­ed, was broad­cast on the in­ter­net. 

“I wish to as­sure all that the South Caribbean Con­fer­ence of Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tists and/or the gov­ern­ing body of the Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Church in Trinidad and To­ba­go in no way what­so­ev­er fa­cil­i­tat­ed, par­tic­i­pat­ed in, and/or en­cour­aged the state­ments con­cern­ing and/or any ref­er­ences to Mr Lyons’ at­ten­dance at the said church ser­vice,” Moses said. 

“It is deeply re­gret­ted that Mr Lyons’ at­ten­dance and his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the church ser­vice have been mis­rep­re­sent­ed by a per­son or per­sons un­known,” he added. 

He stat­ed that he ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments when he vis­it­ed the church to coun­sel griev­ing mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tion last week. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing be­fore hav­ing sight of the press re­lease, Lyons’ lawyer Joel Rop­er re­vealed that of­fi­cials of the church had re­quest­ed a meet­ing with his client, who re­fused and ad­vised that they should of­fi­cial­ly re­spond to his le­gal let­ter. 

In his le­gal let­ter on Mon­day, Rop­er said the in­ci­dent im­pact­ed his client’s rep­u­ta­tion and that of his band, Free­town Col­lec­tive, as they were in the process of clos­ing “very im­por­tant” cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship deals.