A SANGRE Grande man was shot and killed Thursday night in what investigators believe was a slaying over protection of drug turf. Neil Khan, 29, was described by police as a drug pusher, who was fatally shot after knowingly or unknowingly straying unto another drug dealer’s turf.

Up to late yesterday, no arrests had been made and sources told Newsday persons in the area at the time of the shooting are refusing to talk.

According to reports, around 8.15 pm Khan, an unemployed man of Vaughn Avenue, Foster Road, was standing at the side of William Trace, off Foster Road.

Without warning, a volley of shots was heard and Khan screamed out, ran a short distance and collapsed on the road bleeding heavily from a wound to the left side of his chest.

His brother Nyron Khan, who was standing nearby, ran to Neil’s assistance and together with other residents, took the wounded, semi-conscious man to the Sangre Grande district hospital where doctors pronounced him dead-on-arrival.

A report was made to Sangre Grande police and officers led by Insp Edmond Thomas and including Sgt Fermin Roy, Cpl Neville Sankar and Homicide Bureau detective Sgt Hendron Moses, visited the scene.
Investigators theorise that Khan wandered into someone’s turf and was fired upon.

Officers told Newsday while no arrests had been made up to late yesterday, they were looking for a resident of the area where Khan was shot. An autopsy carried out yesterday at the Forensic Sciences Centre confirmed that Khan died of shock and haemorrhage consistent with a gunshot wound to the left side of his chest.

Khan, who was unmarried, lived with his parents and two brothers. Cpl Neville Sankar of Sangre Grande CID, is leading investigations.

POLICE COMMISSIONER Hilton Guy said statements in the media about the impending police/army operation in Laventille/Morvant will in no way diminish the success of that operation.

Speaking to reporters at Crowne Plaza yesterday, the Commissioner also revealed that four Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents will be coming to Trinidad to train local, Guyanese and Surinamese cops in the latest surveillance and detection techniques to deal with kidnapping.

Guy reiterated that no senior officer in the Police Service dubbed the exercise “Operation Baghdad” and he was certain it was reporters who gave it that title. However, it was his ACP Crime, who on Monday in an exclusive interwview with Newsday reporter Nalinee Seelal said of the Laventille operation, “It would be like Baghdad.”

He said while it was preferable that such operations be kept secretive “if it is announced beforehand it gives a disadvantage to the implementation of that plan, but it is not fatal.”

“It doesn’t mean that because it is known that all participants of criminal activity will put away all instruments of crime, or leave the area. They are not that coward they are not that considerate, but it is preferable that the element of surprise be preserved,” the Commissioner said.

Guy said the present situation in Laventille/Morvant is more complex than what is seen in the newspapers and that “our intelligence gathering effort has been enhanced and intensified to deal with that complex situation”.

“Our intelligence is not merely to identify criminals or prospective areas of criminality, but to gather other conditions that are precedent,” Guy added. The Commissioner confirmed  National Security Minister Howard Chin Lee’s announcement about FBI agents coming to train members of the Anti-Kidnapping Squad, and said the training will also include members of the Guyanese and Surinamese police forces.

POLICE Constable Khelewan Ramsook, attached to the Central Division Task Force, suffered serious injuries to his right foot when he stepped on a fish hook trap set in the yard of the home of a suspected drug dealer.

The fish hooks, dipped in gramoxone and cast in concrete, were concealed in a grass lawn at the back yard of the suspect’s premises.
Reports revealed that around 5 am, officers led by Ag Sgt Ajith Persad, the Head of the Central Division Task Force and including PCs Ramsook, James, Pierre, Narcis and Sinnanan, went to the Chase Village home of the 28-year-old man, to execute a search warrant.

PC Ramsook alighted from the police vehicle and ran after the suspect who on seeing the police started running away.

As PC Ramsook pursued the suspect he stepped on the concrete slabs with the fish hooks.

The hooks penetrated his shoes and penetrated his right foot.
Ramsook shouted to his fellow officers warning them about the fish hooks embedded in the slabs. He was able to pull out the hooks.
Despite all this, the suspect who ran to the front of his house was promptly arrested by other officers.

He was searched and a quantity of marijuana was discovered in his jockey shorts.

Officers also searched his house and a quantity of hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes was found in a pillow.

A 26-year-old woman was also arrested. The two were taken to the Chaguanas Police Station where they were charged by PC Pierre.
PC Ramsook was taken to the Chaguanas Health Centre where he was treated by a doctor.

Officers also removed the slabs of concrete with the fish hooks.
Newsday learned that several drug dealers are placing fish hooks around their homes to forestall to police raids.

Police officers said yesterday that they will be forced to pay more attention to surroundings whenever they carry out raids for drugs.
The same officers later went to Longdenville where they arrested a 30-year-old man and seized a quantity of marijuana seeds.

They also went to a travel agency in Chaguanas, where they seized a number of passports, stamps, letterheads, documents purported to be stamped by the American Embassy, pictures and other documents.
A man was detained but was allowed to leave to seek medical treatment.

No bail for San Juan auto businessman Frankie Boodram, was the order coming from appellate judge justice Stanley John  yesterday.

Justice John refused  to grant Boodram  bail pending his appeal on a conviction and sentence of five years for receiving stolen goods (van parts). He also refused an application to have Boodram’s appeal listed for early trial. Resisting the application on behalf of the State was Assistant DPP Devan Rampersad.

In dismissing the bail application, Justice John recalls that when a person seeks bail after conviction it is well known and well settled that the circumstances must be “exceptional” to justify the exercise of the Court’s discretion.

He further recalled,  the fact that there is a real possibility of success in an appeal is not so much a ground for granting bail as a condition of granting it for some other reason. However, if it is,  the prospect of success alone that is being relied upon, then the applicant must show more than a real possibility of success.

Referring to Boodram’s lead attorney Vernon de Lima, Justice John said: “Mr De Lima for the applicant, in support of the application relied upon the prospect of success alone.

“It follows, therefore, that the applicant must satisfy me on a balance of probabilities that there is a better than even chance of his appeal succeeding…

“In all circumstances, I do not consider that this appellant has shown that he has a better then even chance of succeeding on his appeal. That is to say on the evidence before me, I am not persuaded that there is a probability of success.

“Accordingly, the application for bail pending appeal is refused.”
Boodram was found guilty on February 26, 2003, but  was sentenced two days later by Justice Paula Mae Weeks, to five years imprisonment following a stirring plea in mitigation by his defence lawyer Israel Khan SC. The maximum sentence is ten years.

Also representing Boodram at the bail application were Joseph Pantor and Rajiv Persad.

No word has been heard from the kidnappers of businessman Anslem Choo Woon Chee, and officers of the Anti Kidnapping Squad (AKS) are concerned that no ransom demand has been made.

Adding to the concerns of relatives and police is the fact that gunshots were heard when he was snatched Wednesday night in front of his home at Sand Bank Avenue, San Boucaud, Santa Cruz by armed men.
There is speculation that Choo Woon Chee might have been shot during the struggle which he put up with one of the kidnappers. 
He is the proprietor of Archie’s Supermar-ket, Cantaro Village, Santa Cruz.

Of concern is the fact that if the businessman has been shot, then the people who snatched and are holding him may not take him to a medical institution.

Police also believe that Choo Woon Chee might also have been snatched because he was a witness to a robbery and shooting incident at his supermarket earlier this year, when a security guard was shot and robbed of his firearm.

Yesterday as the investigations continued, AKS officers together with members of the North Eastern Division searched places in the Santa Cruz area but to no avail. Lawmen said they are working along certain lines.

Choo Woon Chee had entered his yard in his blue four-door van around 8.10 pm when an armed man stopped the vehicle and attemp-ted to pull him out.

Police said Woon Chee tried to drive away, but that the man held on to one of the van’s door and tried to pull the businessman out. 

 
As a consequence, the van crashed and police said the as-sailant snatched Woon Chee and placed him in a waiting Nissan Primera silver grey vehicle, in which there were about three other occupants. 
Before leaving, police said several warning shots were fired.
Relatives have ex-pressed concern saying that the businessman is  asthmatic.

They also said that Choo Woon Chee’s two children are totally traumatised.

SENIOR police officers were up to late evening checking firearms to determine if any shots were fired from them as claimed by residents of Beetham Estate.

“We are categorically denying this charge,” a senior officer told Newsday, even as Beetham residents were on a radio station claiming excess police brutality. While denying the charge, senior police officers said they will carry out the necessary firearm checks to make sure that the allegations are not true.

Senior police officers also told Newsday that contrary to the charges made, no member of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force (TTDF) was present.

ASP Martin Murrain of the Port-of-Spain Division is spearheading that enquiry and no report on the firearm checks were available up to late evening. What police said actually happened is that a party of officers of the Port-of-Spain Divisional Task Force, led by Cpl Orr went to execute a search warrant at the home of a Phase II Beetham resident around 4.30 am yesterday.

The officers were on exercise at the time and police said when the officers got to the man’s home, the owner ran out, jumped a fence and was subsequently arrested.

Another man, who was also in the house at the time was arrested. Police said over 900 grammes of marijuana was found in the man’s home.

Both men were taken into police custody and are expected to be charged with possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking. 
They are due to put in a court appearance at the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court Monday.

In a bid to have the Ministry of Health revoke the appointment of Dr Anand Chatoorgoon as the Ag Medical Chief of Staff at the San Fernando General Hospital, junior doctors staged a “stand-up” protest outside the hospital’s administration offices yesterday.

However, the protesting doctors complained that Dr Chatoorgoon was absent from the hospital since he was out doing private practice. But Dr Chatoorgoon said he was entitled to practice privately.

Led by MPATT assistant secretary, Dr Lakhan Roop, about 60 doctors, some outfitted in white shirt-jacs with stethoscopes dangling around their necks, stood silently in front of the main entrance leading to the offices, while another doctor distributed handbills labelled “Absentee Top Doc” to curious members of the public watching the protest.

The handbills detailed doctors’ grievances with Dr Chatoorgoon, who had not yet reported for duty at the time the protest began.

According to Dr Roop, the protest would continue until Dr Chatoorgoon was relieved of duties.

“This is to sensitise the Ministry of Health that the doctors were in full support of Dr Trinidade, and would like to have him reinstated as the Medical Chief of Staff,” Roop said. He added: “We intend to keep this up almost every day until the message is sent to the Ministry that they need to reinstate Dr Trinidade.”

Roop also pointed out that the Health Ministry’s directive ordering Dr Trinidade to proceed on compulsory leave was “not recognised under the Public Service Commission.”

If allowed to go unchallenged, it could be used against other doctors in similar situations, he said.

“This should be something that is planned or regulated, not instituted in an ad-hoc manner,” Roop said.

In an immediate response, Dr Chatoorgoon said he was not seeking any confrontation with the junior doctors.

He added that the appointment was made by the Ministry of Health and he would continue to function in the office of Medical Chief of Staff until otherwise directed by the Ministry.