Cops kill cutlass-wielding attacker

A MAN, described by police as a drug addict, was shot and killed by officers who tried, but failed to overpower and arrest him after he chopped a retired bailiff in a Siparia forest on Wednesday afternoon, leaving the elderly man hospitalised in critical condition. Dennis Joseph, 65, who was chopped several times about his hands and head by Reynold Brown, 39, still managed to escape and drive two miles to his Quinam Road, Siparia home where his wife telephoned the police. Joseph who sustained a fractured skull, had to undergo emergency surgery on Wednesday night.

When officers went in search of and confronted Brown, they shot him in the leg after he reportedly attacked them with the same cutlass used to inflict the wounds on Joseph. Brown who was shot in the right thigh, was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. Police said Brown was a drug addict who lived on his father’s estate in an isolated, forested area off Quinam Road in Siparia. According to police reports, Joseph left home to catch birds in the forest. As he was about to leave in his white pick-up van around 5 pm, an enraged Brown threw a log in front the van and told Joseph he could not pass. Joseph got out the van and removed the log.

This further angered Brown, who started arguing and then dealt Joseph several chops. The elderly man, bleeding profusely from multiple chop wounds, staggered into the van and drove off. When he arrived home and collapsed into the arms of his wife Lorna, she telephoned the police. Joseph’s cousin, a retired Police Snr Supt, took him to San Fernando General Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery and remains warded in critical condition. Recalling the frightening experience, Mrs Joseph told Newsday, “I heard him come back and all I saw was him covered in blood.

I called the police and the ambulance and was wiping the blood...but the more I wiped, the more he was bleeding.” Lorna said her husband’s only words were, “The mad man get meh, the mad man get meh, I feeling dizzy.” She said her husband loved birds and as a form of recreation, he would catch them. The woman said she never met Brown, but last month he took down Joseph’s bird traps and destroyed them. Mrs Joseph also said her husband was not the only person to have been attacked by Brown.