Man shot dead in front girlfriend

WESTERN Division detectives remain baffled over the motive for the country’s 56th and latest murder of the year, in which 25-year-old Petit Valley gardener Jason La Roche was gunned down on Saturday night. La Roche, of Cameron Road, Petit Valley, was fatally shot, police said, while visiting his girlfriend Rebecca Johnson around 8.30 pm at Pioneer Drive, Diego Martin. Police reports state La Roche and his girlfriend were standing outside her home, when a gun-toting man walked up to them and opened fire. La Roche was shot in the chest and head at point blank range, collapsing and dying on the spot. Johnson who witnessed the incident, escaped unhurt.

After the District Medical Officer arrived and viewed the corpse, it was removed to the Port-of-Spain Mortuary. While police could not say what the motive was for the killing, family members remained just as confused, claiming La Roche was not involved in any bad company or illegal activity. La Roche’s grieving father Theodore Garcia, recalled how he got the news of his son’s death. “Some of Jason’s friends came not too long after the shooting and tell me he get kill. I went up where it happened and saw his lifeless body lying there,” Garcia cried. Asked whether he had any idea why anyone would want to kill his son, the grieving man said, “that is a nice question. A very nice question. I myself would like to know. This thing have me confused because they say is three men who come to kill him. Two stayed in the car and one came out and shoot him.”

While relatives and police officers still have no official motive, police sources theorised La Roche might have used his gardening skills to cultivate a marijuana field, which had been eyed for similar cultivation by others. Up to late yesterday, no arrests had been made and detective Cpl Husbands of Four Roads police station is continuing investigations. An autopsy on La Roche’s body will be carried out at the Forensic Sciences Centre today.