SUICIDE AT CAMP OGDEN

A 24-YEAR-OLD soldier committed suicide by shooting himself through the head early yesterday morning, at First Battalion Headquarters, Camp Ogden, Long Circular Road, St James.

Soldiers on duty at Camp Ogden, reported hearing a single loud explosion around 6.15 am in the vicinity of a wooden building which once housed the Officers’ Mess.
On checking under the building which is four feet off the ground, soldiers found Private (Pvt) Kambon Nkori Austin, 24, dressed in civilian clothing, slumped on a chair with blood streaming from a bullet wound under his chin. Near the body was a Galil machine gun.
Austin, who was still alive at the time, was taken in an Army vehicle to Port-of-Spain General Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Visiting the scene yesterday morning were Snr Supt Selwyn Glasgow, Supts Nadir Mohammed and Nimrod, Sgt Nandram Monilal, Cpl Charles and Homicide Bureau investigators, ASP Nadir Khan and Sgt Wayne Dick.

An autopsy done yesterday at Forensic Sciences Centre concluded that Pvt Austin died of shock and haemorrhage consistent with a single gunshot wound under the chin, with the 5.56 calibre bullet exiting through the skull. The autopsy was carried out by Forensic Pathologist Dr Hughvon des Vignes.
Pvt Austin, who enlisted in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment on July 6, 1998, lived at Ramatally Park, Pepper Village, Fyzabad. He had two brothers and two sisters.

Police who visited the scene retrieved a letter near to where Pvt Austin committed suicide. However, military sources told Newsday that after examination of the letter, it was established that Pvt Austin did not write the letter.

Sources said the space under the abandoned Officers’ Mess building was a popular liming spot for soldiers and as such, someone else who may have been liming there, discarded the letter, which reportedly contained information about a soldier’s (name not given) problems with a certain Senior Military Officer at Camp Ogden. Sources within Camp Ogden reported that soldiers were in a state of shock following Pvt Austin’s suicide. However, when Newsday visited Camp Ogden yesterday afternoon, soldiers were engaged in a game of windball cricket, a mere walking distance from where Pvt Austin committed suicide.

Newsday understands that Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Brigadier General Ancil Antoine is being kept abreast of internal military investigations into the suicide and is to get a report on the incident by week’s end. Efforts to reach CDS Antoine for comment yesterday proved futile.
Sgt Nandram Monilal of St James CID is leading investigations into Pvt Austin’s suicide.