Taxi driver chopped, dumped in bushes

THE WIDOW of the country’s latest murder victim says she is praying that her husband’s killers will be brought to justice, but admits she does not have much hope for his murder to be solved. “All I am hearing is promises — this being done and that being done and nothing is happening. I am not sure if this murder will ever be solved but I will pray that justice is served. The killer or killers must be prosecuted. I want answers as to why he was killed and who killed him,” Roxanne Bowen declared yesterday.

On Saturday morning the body of Terence Bowen, 33, a mechanic and part-time taxi driver, was found in some bushes off a dirt track on Cameron Road, Petit Valley. There were several chop wounds about the body. “Terence was too popular and friendly a person to have died so,” the grieving woman told Newsday. Bowen was last seen alive around 11 pm on Thursday night when he left his Davidson Drive, Diego Martin home in his green Hyundai Sonata to work the Port-of-Spain/St James route. When he did not return home by 6 am on Friday, his wife contacted his sister, Lisa Lallgier, at the family home on Broad Street, St James. Bowen had lived there up to six months ago and was usually there when he was not at home. After several frantic calls to family and friends, relatives eventually called the police and filed a missing person report. The following day the police told them a body had been found. Based on the description of the corpse they got from the police, Bowen’s relatives went to the Port-of-Spain Mortuary where they positively identified his remains.

“He was a wonderful husband and great father,” his widow said yesterday. “I knew of no enemies. As a matter of fact he was so popular, that when he started working this route and I expressed fears about the late hours and crime, he said because of how well he was known he was sure his back would always be watched and protected. How wrong he was!” The couple had been married for nine years and had three children, Letisha, 12, Keron, nine, and Joshua, four. Bowen’s teary-eyed sister Lisa Lallgier, who was giving moral support to her bereaved sister-in-law, called for swift action. “That was my only brother that they killed like a dog and dumped in the bushes. Whoever killed him must be brought to justice. It is time the police and the powers that be go out and rid this country of all the killers and criminals,” she declared.

“My brother was the happiest man alive... he did not deserve a death like that.” This is the second traumatic incident to affected the family in recent months. Four months ago another relative, Jessica Riober, 16, fell off a ride in a Miami amusement park and smashed her skull, sustaining internal haemorrhaging and a detached ear.  She is still recuperating from the April 2 mishap in a Miami hospital. Sgt Duncan is investigating.