PAMELA NELSON, sister of slain policeman PC Derrick Nelson, said yesterday she wished her brother had listened to her the night of May 31, when he was shot and robbed of his firearm and other items at Milton Road, Couva. The 37-year-old officer, of Pasea Street, St Augustine, succumbed to his injuries Saturday morning at the San Fernando General Hospital. PC Nelson joined the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service in September of 1988 and at the time of his death, had been assigned bodyguard duties to High Court Judge Herbert Volney. At his home yesterday, Pamela said Nelson was home all of Saturday, May 31.  He then left late in the evening to pick up his two daughters, Jenna, 15, and Dernelle, 13, from cinema. Officer Nelson dropped his daughters at home, and around 8.30 pm, said he was going out. Pamela said she asked her younger brother not to go out because of certain things she read in the newspapers (a plot to kill a policeman in Valencia). “He said he was not letting any bandits keep him inside,” Pamela said. She added that she told him to “be safe” and offered him her cell phone since he did not have his. 
 
He refused the offer, telling Pamela that she would only harass him. She said she asked him where he was going, but that he did not say. “If he had listened to me…but then again, this could have happened any time,” she said. The rest is history, Pamela said, explaining that she will not question God’s actions, since doctors told her if her brother had survived, he would have had several complications. She said she did not want to make any assumptions until the police probe was over.  “I don’t know what the motive is and I have no leads. I have no idea what he was doing there,” she said. Pamela described her Tobago-born brother as a very dedicated and bubbly officer, who did almost everything for her.  “I will miss him. “He was my companion, my guardian and did everything for me but there will be no more of that now,” she said. She said he used to wake her up on mornings, go to the market and several other things. Pamela is also of the firm belief that the nurses and doctors at the San Fernando General Hospital did everything possible to save her brother’s life. “They briefed me on the extent of his injuries and told me what to expect. They never hid anything from me,” she said. Pamela said she was hoping for her brother’s condition to settle, before moving him to a nursing home, en route to a full recovery. She said the police also wanted to move her brother, but she said she did not want to make the wrong decision.

Saying that the police were 100 percent behind her brother, Pamela said she blames the incident on social problems affecting the country. “It is frightening,” she said, later appealing to members of the public to support the police, since she does not believe that the majority of the policemen are bad. Pamela said she would be taking care of her brother’s two daughters.  Asked how they were coping, Jenna said: “I have to be strong for him.”  And Dernelle, shrugging her shoulders with a shy smile, said: “I don’t know what to say.” The officer’s younger brother, Barry, said he blamed the youths for the crime situation and appealed to the Government of the day to help them. Barry said the youths are frustrated, since when they come for service at Government agencies, they are turned away, while “well-off” citizens are assisted.  He also said the crime problem was a political one. Both Pamela and Barry appealed to their brother’s killers to mend their ways.  They said the perpetrators may have gotten away with their act now, but that God will eventually deal with them. Meantime, investigators working on the case said they are yet to make arrests in the cop killing.  Sgt Burke of the Couva CID is continuing investigations.

CONSTABLE Derrick Nelson knew his killers. That is the firm view of his colleagues and senior investigators. Also, a witness, who has so far refused to go to the police, told neighbours that the way the incident happened at Milton Road, Couva, on the night of May 31, Nelson knew the persons who subsequently shot him. Top investigators in Central and South are searching for the villager who may be able to provide the vital information needed to crack this case. The police believe that the villager may have witnessed the incident on the lone and dark Milton Road but is afraid to come forward in light of what is happening in the country these days. Senior policemen told Newsday yesterday that while Nelson was warded at the San Fernando General Hospital over the last week, he said very little to them. In one instance, he said that one of the men was masked. “It was either he really did not see his attackers or he was withholding the identities until he recovered,” one officer added.

The official police report stated that Nelson was ambushed while driving his car along Milton Road shortly after 11 pm on May 31. He was later shot, robbed of his automatic pistol with ammunition along with cash and jewelry. Nelson was also forced to jump 20 feet into a river to escape his assailants. He also suffered two broken legs as a result of the fall. He was reportedly shot five times about the body. He was rescued minutes later by a villager who summoned others to assist. Nelson left his St Augustine home around 8.30 pm and went to a house in Couva to visit a female friend. After leaving the Couva house, Nelson was reportedly attacked. But the villager who is being sought by the police reportedly told neighbours that Nelson’s car was stopped by three men. Nelson, according to the report, got out of the car and “it appeared that he knew the men”. It was while approaching the men that shots rang out and Nelson was shot. He did not have his revolver with him at the time of the attack.

The report stated that Nelson had no time to return to his car so he jumped into the dark river to escape the attackers. The three men then searched the car where they found the policeman’s revolver along with other items and sped off. Nelson was taken to the Couva Health facility and then transferred to the San Fernando General Hospital. His car was impounded, but later handed back to the family. Although they are treating the motive as robbery, police are not ruling out that it could have been a hit on the CID detective. Nelson, 37, was assigned to Justice Herbert Volney in 1997 after the completion of a major drug case in the Assizes.

FORMER Attorney General Ra-mesh Lawrence Maharaj declared that the only way Government can seriously deal with crime in Trinidad and Tobago is to eradicate the illegal drug trade. Addressing a regional conference of the National Workers Action Committee at the Arima Town Hall on Saturday, Maharaj disagreed with Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s statement that last week’s shooting at the Movie Towne cineplex was a case of “internecine warfare” which did not threaten the average citizen and that the increased flow of guns into Trinidad from Venezuela was linked to recent political disturbances in that country. Maharaj said illegal drugs enter this country from Venezuela and other Latin American countries and are either consumed or shipped to North America. “The illegal drug trade fuels crime,” he declared. Maharaj said while he was AG there was an intelligence network between local police and their counterparts in the United States and Britain but since he left that “gone through”.

The former AG claimed the Manning administration was unable to deal with crime and the police would be reluctant to tackle criminals if they believed a government was “meeting with and harbouring criminals”. Maharaj also said the Anti-Kidnapping Bill was a waste of time, saying the proposed legislation would be useless if criminals could not be detected and caught and wondered why the PNM and UNC were making a meal of this issue. He also said it was illegal for Government to demolish squatters’ homes built on State lands unless it had a court order to do so. Maharaj warned Government that unless it desists from such action, he would take the matter to court in seven days and get an order of mandamus to force Government to do its duty outlined under the Constitution. The former AG said the “courts would be on trial” and if he was unsuccessful in the High Court, he was prepared to fight the matter all the way up to the Privy Council. Maharaj said the country needed to undergo a social transformation and he had embarked on a crusade to achieve this end. He called upon the population not to let the PNM and the UNC cloud the issue with race and said whoever forms the government tends to discriminate against “the weaker sections of the population”. Vision on Mission president Wayne Chance said crime in the country had not reached the stage of “the Wild West”. “There is still hope,” he assured the gathering.

THE Opposition United National Congress (UNC) has confirmed that discussions are taking place between the party and the NAR to contest the July 14 Local Government Elections. However it has not been determined which or how many seats each party will contest. That decision is expected to be finalised by the end of the week. But even as both parties move forward on their discussions, the Tobago arm of the NAR said it is yet to be “fully brought into the picture”. But it warns of the UNC’s “prejudicial” behaviour toward the NAR when it was put in government in 1995 as a result of the two Tobago seats. UNC Chairman Wade Mark yesterday confirmed to Newsday that there have been discussions with the NAR. He described the discussions as being “a very hopeful development”. He said a final decision should be made in a couple of days and if positive by the end of the week “you will hear something”. About reports that the UNC will contest 104 seats and the NAR 22 of the 126 seats to be contested in 14 municipal corporations, Mark said that too will be finalised at the end of the week. However the Tobago NAR in a release from its Chairman Christo Gift, said while it was told by the NAR’s National Executive of efforts to “forge an agreement” between parties in opposition to the PNM, it was yet to be fully brought into the picture.

Gift said he trust that his intimations to the political leader Lennox Sankersingh, on the matter of a UNC/NAR accommodation would not be disregarded or trivialised. He reminded his party of the 1995 accommodation with the UNC, which led to the UNC getting into government. Gift said then it was the universal expectation that “theirs would be a governance on behalf of all the peoples” of Trinidad and Tobago. He said experience had demonstrated that it was “otherwise” and indeed governance by the UNC was “decidedly prejudicial to the NAR in both Tobago and Trinidad”. He warned that the public disclosures of indictment against the UNC’s conduct should not be avoided or overlooked and to that end, the NAR’s philosophy and history in governance should not be compromised in seeking short sighted goals. Meantime Wednesday is the deadline for persons to get their names on the revised list of electors for the Elections. The advice from the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) reminds members of the public that they must be registered to be able to vote. The EBC has set up a hotline to accommodate persons seeking to clarify their registration status. The hotlines are operational during the week from 8 am to 6 pm and on weekends from 9 am to 6 pm.

TWO Securicor security guards yesterday shot their way out of a suspected robbery attempt on the Grand Bazaar Mall compound, police sources said. Police reports are that around 2.30pm, three Securicor security officers went to the Grand Bazaar to collect money on behalf of the Island Club Casino. The white Securicor security van stopped at the bottom of some steps, leading to the entrance of the Island Club Casino.  Two of the security officers came out, while one remained in the security van. Police said a short while after, a white vehicle, in which there were two male occupants, came from a westernly direction on the Grand Bazaar compound. One of the men came out of the car and ordered the two Securicor guards not to move. Police said the armed man fired  shots. The two Securicor officers took cover and returned fire while the bandit fled into the car from which he came. They then made good their escape.

No money was stolen, and no one was injured in the shootout, but a customer’s blue Suzuki Baleno was struck three times, in the back windscreen, the left indicator and the left back glass window. A report was made and a party of officers headed by Sgt Don Lezama and including PCs Anthony Remy and Yearwood of the St Joseph Criminal Investigations Department visited the scene and condiucted investigations. At the scene yesterday, a male worker said the Securicor guards had come to make a “normal pick-up” when the shooting occurred.

A 15-year-old Siparia school girl, who was sexually assaulted and taunted by a 52-year-old relative in the forest for two days, was rescued by officers of the South Western Division on Friday night. Following information received and hours of surveillance, around 7.30 pm, a party of officers led by Sgt Michael Wells and Cpl Innis Minors, including PCs Anthony Mahabir, Salick Jagroop, Cecil Sadia, Kurn Alexander and Kurt Hagard journeyed two miles into a forested area of the South Western district. According to reports, the man was found standing near the girl when the police surrounded him. The girl broke down in tears when the lawmen identified themselves as police officers. The suspect, a watchman of Siparia, was arrested and taken to the Siparia CID. The traumatised teenager, who was kidnapped last Wednesday, told police that she was forced to sleep on the ground in the forest for two consecutive days and nights. She reported that the man kept threatening to kill her if she tried to escape. During her captivity, the teenager told police that the man sexually assaulted her and she was forced to stay close to him at all times.

A statement was recorded from the teenager before she was medically examined by a doctor at the San Fernando General Hospital. According to police reports, around midday, the girl and her parents had gone to the relative’s house, where  the teen’s parents and the man engaged in a heated dispute.  The suspect became enraged, picked up a cutlass and threatened to kill the girl. He then dragged the screaming girl out of the house and into a forested area. The suspect has since been charged by PC Anthony Mahabir with kidnapping and indecent assault and is expected to appear before a Siparia Magistrate today.