Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

One of two men who were beat­en to death by Venezue­lan na­tion­als dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion in Fyz­abad on Fri­day had been re­leased from prison on­ly a few months ago.

Anselm Nicholas, 31, and his friend, Richard Mc­David, 38, died at the Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty hours af­ter the in­ci­dent.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are still try­ing to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly what led to the dead­ly con­fronta­tion.

Ini­tial re­ports in­di­cate that around 4pm, Nicholas and Mc­David were walk­ing along Del­hi Road, Fyz­abad, near a car wash when they be­came in­volved in an ar­gu­ment with an­oth­er man.

Three His­pan­ic men re­port­ed­ly in­ter­vened, and Mc­David al­leged­ly slapped one of them.

The sit­u­a­tion quick­ly es­ca­lat­ed in­to a vi­o­lent al­ter­ca­tion dur­ing which Nicholas and Mc­David were se­vere­ly beat­en.

The man with whom they had ini­tial­ly ar­gued lat­er drove the in­jured men to the Fyz­abad Po­lice Sta­tion. They were sub­se­quent­ly tak­en to the Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where they were pro­nounced dead some­time be­fore 9 pm.

Po­lice said both men sus­tained mul­ti­ple in­juries, in­clud­ing swelling and abra­sions to their bod­ies.

When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed Easy Street, where Mc­David lived, no one was at home yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, res­i­dents of the Fyz­abad com­mu­ni­ty al­leged that he had been in­volved in rob­beries and lar­ce­nies.

Nicholas’ moth­er al­so ac­knowl­edged that her son had been in­volved in theft.

She said he was re­leased from prison around Feb­ru­ary af­ter serv­ing a six-year sen­tence.

She said she had re­peat­ed­ly urged him to change his life and dis­tance him­self from cer­tain friends, but he re­fused to lis­ten.

“I hoped that af­ter he came out of prison he would have changed his life, but he didn’t,” she said. “As the old peo­ple say, ‘You live by the sword, you die by the sword.’”

De­spite this, an­oth­er close rel­a­tive said Nicholas did not de­serve such a fate.

“They could have bro­ken his hand or foot, but they shouldn’t have killed him,” she said.

Mean­while, Mon De­sir coun­cil­lor Deryck Bowrin said the Gov­ern­ment was do­ing its best to ad­dress the coun­try’s crime prob­lem.

Re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism about the lack of po­lice posts in some com­mu­ni­ties, Bowrin said he could not un­der­stand the com­plaints and would wel­come a po­lice post in the dis­trict.

How­ev­er, he stressed that law en­force­ment alone can­not solve crime and re­quires the sup­port and co­op­er­a­tion of the pub­lic.

Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Re­gion III, are con­tin­u­ing in­quiries in­to the in­ci­dent.