Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Two years af­ter PC Clarence Gilkes was gunned down on a stair­case in Diego Mar­tin, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his death still re­main un­clear and the court mat­ter in­volv­ing two of his col­leagues is still un­re­solved.

Gilkes was one of sev­er­al of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed to re­ports of gun­men on the prowl at Up­per Rich­plain Road, Diego Mar­tin, on the af­ter­noon of April 22, 2022.

The of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly con­front­ed a sus­pect, Jehlano Rom­ney, on a nar­row stair­case.

In an in­stant, Gilkes was killed.

While the orig­i­nal, of­fi­cial ac­count pro­vid­ed by of­fi­cers re­port­ed that Rom­ney shot Gilkes, an au­top­sy days lat­er proved Gilkes was shot from be­hind by a TTPS-is­sued bul­let, di­rect­ly con­tra­dict­ing the orig­i­nal re­port.

One of Gilkes’ col­leagues, PC Kris­t­ian Gen­ty, was lat­er charged with his mur­der, while WPC Crys­tal Williams-Bow­man was charged with shoot­ing at Rom­ney with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm.

Gen­ty was sub­se­quent­ly grant­ed $600,000 bail, while Williams-Bow­man was re­leased on $500,000 bail.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Aris­sa Ma­haraj, one of the at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the of­fi­cers, said while the mat­ter be­gan two years ago, the State still had out­stand­ing state­ments to en­ter. She con­firmed that the de­fence had re­ceived close to 40 state­ments from po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors and civil­ians.

Ma­haraj said at the last hear­ing on March 19, there were dis­cus­sions over whether the mat­ter would be trans­ferred to the High Court as part of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings Amend­ment (AJI­PA) Act. How­ev­er, she said, she was the on­ly de­fence at­tor­ney present, as oth­er at­tor­neys were deal­ing with oth­er mat­ters at the time.

Ma­haraj said she did not re­ceive in­struc­tions on whether they agreed with hav­ing the mat­ter trans­ferred. She not­ed that hav­ing the mat­ter trans­ferred to the High Court would hold the pros­e­cu­tion to main­tain cer­tain dead­lines to en­sure it did not drag on longer than nec­es­sary.

“We are still dis­cussing it, but it seems to be that we may con­sid­er hav­ing the mat­ter trans­ferred so that the State will have to work with the dead­lines of AJI­PA, in terms of hav­ing dis­clo­sure made at a rea­son­able time,” Ma­haraj said.

“We have not got­ten all of the state­ments so we haven’t had the time to go through all the ev­i­dence, but we are con­sid­er­ing hav­ing it trans­ferred.

“The State is of the view that the mat­ter should be trans­ferred, but they want to have dis­clo­sure com­plet­ed in the Mag­is­trates’ Court and then make that ap­pli­ca­tion. We will be ob­ject­ing to that.”

While it was im­pos­si­ble to es­ti­mate how soon a ver­dict could be reached, Ma­haraj said the mat­ter was “nowhere near” com­ple­tion, adding that it was high­ly un­like­ly it could be re­solved be­fore the end of 2024.

Jehlano Rom­ney, the man orig­i­nal­ly ac­cused of killing Gilkes, was the State’s main wit­ness in the mat­ter. How­ev­er, Rom­ney was mur­dered in Mor­vant in No­vem­ber 2022.

Be­fore his mur­der, Rom­ney spoke with po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors and of­fi­cials from the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) and pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence. His state­ments can still be en­tered as ev­i­dence de­spite his death.

Un­der the Ev­i­dence Act 15C, writ­ten state­ments of a per­son can be used as oral ev­i­dence in crim­i­nal mat­ters when the per­son is un­avail­able by “death, phys­i­cal or men­tal in­fir­mi­ty, can­not be found, is out­side the ju­ris­dic­tion, is kept away by threats of phys­i­cal harm or is fear­ful”.

The mat­ter is ex­pect­ed to re­sume on May 16.

A state­ment from the PCA on Gilkes’ death in 2022 said mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice abused their pow­er and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­led the then-act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob.

The state­ment added that Gilkes’ death was “one of the clear­est ex­am­ples of abuse of po­lice pow­er that the PCA has in­ves­ti­gat­ed to date”.

Rel­a­tives still griev­ing

For Gilkes’ old­er broth­er Mervyn Gilkes, the promise of a swift con­clu­sion can do lit­tle to ease his fam­i­ly’s pain.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the fam­i­ly’s La Re­source Road, D’Abadie home on Thurs­day, the el­der Gilkes said he was not op­ti­mistic that jus­tice would be served, adding he has not re­ceived any up­dates on how far the mat­ter has pro­gressed.

“The way Trinidad goes, years could pass and when it even­tu­al­ly gets to court ev­i­dence will be lost some­how and the case is thrown out. And just like that, a man lost his life and like it doesn’t mat­ter,” he said.

In the liv­ing room of the fam­i­ly’s home, Gilkes’ por­trait still hangs from the wall. A t-shirt print­ed and worn for the fu­ner­al, which al­so bears a pho­to of him in uni­form, is cov­ered in plas­tic and hangs in the liv­ing room.

All around the el­der Gilkes were the re­minders of his broth­er’s life and his bizarre death.

“It’s hard to see a po­lice car. It’s not like my broth­er was work­ing in some qui­et place and he died. There are a lot of trig­gers that re­mind me every day of my broth­er,” Gilkes said.

“If I see a po­lice­man or a po­lice ve­hi­cle ... if I turn on the tele­vi­sion and see some­thing, it would trig­ger a re­sponse.”

Gilkes would have cel­e­brat­ed his 46th birth­day on March 11, lit­tle more than a month be­fore the date of his death.

His broth­er said while the fam­i­ly still cel­e­brat­ed his birth­day last year with some prayers and a meal, they did not have any cel­e­bra­tions this year.

“It was hard be­cause to me, the longer this thing goes on the more de­press­ing it gets be­cause no­body is giv­ing you an up­date, no­body is telling you any­thing,” he said.

“He is dead. He is in a grave right now and every­body else is go­ing about their lives.”

Gilkes was giv­en a full mil­i­tary fu­ner­al on April 29, 2022, three days af­ter the au­top­sy, which was at­tend­ed by then-act­ing com­mis­sion­er Ja­cob and for­mer ACP North-West Kelvern Thomp­son.

Dur­ing his trib­ute at Giles’ fu­ner­al, how­ev­er, Thomp­son con­tin­ued to claim Gilkes and his team were fired up­on that day in Diego Mar­tin.

The el­der Gilkes said while he re­ceived oc­ca­sion­al calls and vis­its from two of his broth­er’s col­leagues, the ma­jor­i­ty of his col­leagues had not kept in con­tact with the fam­i­ly.

“You have peo­ple who gen­uine­ly cared and were sym­pa­thet­ic. Then you had oth­er peo­ple call­ing me to tell me about his life when they didn’t even know the man. They had their own agen­da,” he said.

“Some of those peo­ple I don’t want any­thing to do with or talk to them. At the end of the day, I don’t think all of those peo­ple were gen­uine be­cause of cer­tain in­ter­ac­tions I had and I will just leave it as that.”

As at­tor­neys pre­pare their strate­gies for their next court ap­pear­ance in May, Gilkes’ broth­er does not have very high ex­pec­ta­tions for jus­tice or clo­sure.

De­spite this, he con­tin­ues to live his life as best as he can. Re­call­ing his broth­er’s calm, easy­go­ing na­ture, he said it was what Clarence would have want­ed.