Trinidad man beats 19-year-old Venezuelan woman and videotapes her injuries

(Trinidad Guardian) Po­lice have ar­rest­ed a 31-year-old Diego Mar­tin man who al­leg­ed­ly beat a Venezue­lan woman with a wheel span­ner af­ter she threat­ened to end their re­la­tion­ship and then video­taped her in­juries on Tues­day.

A video show­ing the 19-year-old woman’s in­ju­ries and his abuse was shared on so­cial me­dia on Wednes­day, prompt­ing an al­most im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion and out­rage from mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Re­ports stat­ed that around 10 pm Tues­day, the woman was at her Ra­mai Trace, Debe home with her 31-year-old boyfriend.

It was al­leged that she at­tempt­ed to end her re­la­tion­ship with the sus­pect and he used the wheel span­ner to beat her.

He then record­ed a video of the woman with his cell phone. In the video, the man can be heard in­struct­ing the woman, who is wear­ing on­ly un­der­wear, to come clos­er to him.

“Aye! Girl, I not talk­ing too much right? Do what I tell yuh girl and doh tell meh (ex­ple­tive) noth­ing girl be­cause yuh like (ex­ple­tive) thing. Yuh un­der­stand? Ent you know I is ah (ex­ple­tive) mad­man. So whap­pen? Why you don’t re­spect me? Why? All I does ask for is you re­spect me.”
The woman could be heard in the back­ground faint­ly an­swer­ing. The sus­pect then zoomed in on the woman’s bat­tered face and said, “You see how nice you look­ing? Beau­ti­ful.”

He tells her, “Come let yuh fam­i­ly see how yuh look­ing.”

He then or­ders her to kneel on the floor and warns her against not lis­ten­ing to him. The woman walks across the room and he puts the cam­era close to her bruised face and tells her “You see how nice you look­ing?”

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith con­firmed the sus­pect was ar­rest­ed at a house at Re­form Vil­lage, Gas­par­il­lo short­ly af­ter 2 pm.

Grif­fith said po­lice have al­so learnt there were sev­er­al oth­er women at the house where the woman was beat­en.

“When I saw the video I asked our in­tel­li­gence units to use their re­sources to pin­point ex­act­ly where this man was,” Grif­fith said.

He said the man has sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ad­dress­es, in Toma­to Trace, Diego Mar­tin and Ra­mai Trace, Debe, and the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team had been check­ing those ad­dress­es be­fore he was ar­rest­ed.

Guardian Me­dia has since learnt the woman was hos­pi­talised for se­vere trau­ma, cuts and bruis­es from the beat­ing.

Grif­fith said eight Venezue­lans, who are in the coun­try il­le­gal­ly, were found in the house at the time of the man’s ar­rest and al­so tak­en in­to cus­tody.

A state­ment from the Po­lice Ser­vice thanked the pub­lic for shar­ing the in­for­ma­tion on so­cial me­dia to bring at­ten­tion to the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

In an ex­er­cise co­or­di­nat­ed by Snr Supt Zamsheed Mo­hammed and In­sp Per­sad, San Fer­nan­do CID led by Cpl Pul­chan and the elite unit went to Re­form Vil­lage around 2.30 pm where the sus­pect had an­oth­er apart­ment.  

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the woman has been in Trinidad for a year and the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion will check to de­ter­mine if she is here legal­ly.