Another version of Felicity killings

THE EDITOR: If you are familiar with Waterloo by the sea you will understand the inconsistencies which resulted in the police shooting and killing four teenagers from Felicity this week. The sea near the cremation site where the temple is located  has knee high mud when the tide is low. At high tide the water is up to your waist. There is no way you can swim out of there. You have to wade through the mud to get to the bank or outside the wall of the temple. I know this as I used to live in Waterloo. The man who was allegedly hijacked is a stranger to the truth about having to swim to the shore, as you cannot swim to the shore in that area. (This is what my sources in Trinidad told me today over the phone.) These are all relatives who live close by in Felicity. The boys knew the driver well and the driver knew every one of them. They have had their neighbourly disputes and cussing out before as happens in every village.

However, he picked them up because he knew them. While driving they had their usual “young boy taunts” with the driver as all young boys often jokingly do. The girl couldn’t handle it and got scared so she asked to be dropped off in Chaguanas. The heckling became a little serious. They asked him to drop them in Chaguanas in a particular place and he refused, so an argument started. He started to cuss them, stopped the car and told them to “get to f..k out.”And that is where the trouble started. He pulled out his cutlass (often used as protection by taxi-drivers) from below the seat, one of the boys grabbed it and in the struggle for the cutlass the driver got cut. They did not have guns or weapons as the police say and the media was kept away from seeing the details that came from the car after they were killed so the police  statement is sacrosanct in this case.

They locked the door with the automatic lock, drove down through Carapichaima and pushed him out at the cremation site. They then turned the car around and headed for a spree and joyride going through Bank Village and St Mary’s junction. This was the fatal ending. They probably would have brought the car back to the owner as they are all from the same village. We will never know! Too much police aggressiveness to kill them in cold blood like this? Definitely! Opening the racial gap wider in the context of what is happening in TT today?  Definitely! This is similar to the Carenage fiasco where a teenager was also killed in cold blood and buried this week which threw the entire community in mourning and its asking for justice to be done into police violence against citizens of the country.

This is extremely sad as there are ways and means to enforce the law rather that the police shooting and killing citizens in cold blood. The police has shown this nation that they cannot solve simple law enforcement issues and that their only recourse is through the barrel of a gun. They are nothing more than the same bandits that they hunt and kill! Dr Ramesh Deosaran is talking about giving prisoners the right to have sex in jail. All the grant money that he has should be used to study police brutality on the citizens of this country first! The “tonton macoutes” are alive and well  in TT. Mark my words!

DR CHRIS MAHADEO
Port-of-Spain