Trinidad: Four people charged with robbery, murder of Fisherman

Murder accused Kareem Stanisclaus (left) and Mya Bowrin also charged.
Murder accused Kareem Stanisclaus (left) and Mya Bowrin also charged.

(Trinidad Guardian) The fam­i­lies of five mur­dered fish­er­men are call­ing on the po­lice to ar­rest and charge all of the peo­ple who were in­volved in the Ju­ly 22 pi­rate at­tack off Car­li Bay.

Their de­mand came even as four peo­ple ap­peared in court on Fri­day charged with var­i­ous of­fences linked to the case.

 
Coast Guard and oth­er fish­er­men are still search­ing for the bod­ies of two oth­er miss­ing fish­er­men.

In in­ter­views on Fri­day, rel­a­tives of the mur­dered men told Guardian Me­dia that while they want­ed to at­tend the court hear­ing but they were afraid.

Mya Bowrin,18, centre, leaves the Couva Magistrates Court yesterday after she was charged with six offences of robbery with violence.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly up­set be­cause every­one knows one man can’t kill all sev­en of these guys, we are re­al­ly lost for words,” one rel­a­tive said.

She said one per­son couldn’t kill all the fish­er­men on their own, con­sid­er­ing the cir­cum­stances of the case.

The rel­a­tive of an­oth­er vic­tim said she was too afraid of the men see­ing her face to at­tend the hear­ing.

“I want­ed to see their faces, to see how they look know­ing they get caught but I have a fam­i­ly to live for and I don’t know if they have oth­er peo­ple who they will send for us now,” she said.

They are call­ing on Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith to pro­vide them with some lev­el of po­lice pro­tec­tion.

The sea at­tack has left the en­tire fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty in cri­sis and prompt­ed a clash be­tween Op­po­si­tion MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Fitzger­ald Hinds in Par­lia­ment.

Ram­di­al al­so led a protest out­side of Par­lia­ment where the group called for more to be done to help the fam­i­lies of the mur­dered men.

She had called sev­er­al times on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to vis­it the com­mu­ni­ty and meet with the fam­i­lies.

Al­though he nev­er showed up, Young took to his so­cial me­dia on Mon­day to slam Ram­di­al say­ing she was us­ing the tragedy as “a po­lit­i­cal grand­stand.”

“I refuse to use the loss and trau­ma that vic­tims of crime suf­fer as a po­lit­i­cal tool or mo­ment of po­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty.

As Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, from the time I was alert­ed to the at­tack on the fish­er­men last week I was in con­tact with the rel­e­vant heads of se­cu­ri­ty. I re­quest­ed that we de­ploy air and sea as­sets to join the search for our miss­ing cit­i­zens. And I have dis­cussed this phe­nom­e­non that, un­for­tu­nate­ly, is not new, with the heads of se­cu­ri­ty,” Young wrote.

The fish­er­men were beat­en and thrown over­board af­ter a group of men at­tacked the crew of six pirogues in the dead of the night.

The group stole six en­gines and four of the ves­sels were stolen. With­in 24 hours po­lice re­cov­ered one of the stolen boats and six en­gines in Sea Lots. They man­aged to track the en­gines through GPS de­vices in­stalled on two of the mo­tors.

In a sep­a­rate ex­er­cise, on Ju­ly 25 po­lice shot and killed Sea Lots gang­ster Akan­ni “Dole” Adams whom they said was linked to the pi­rate at­tack. Po­lice claimed ves­sels stolen from the Car­li Bay fish­er­men were used by a group of killers who killed Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres, his wife, and two of his hench­men that same day. The kill squad, of about eight peo­ple, es­caped from Las Cuevas by boat.

Pi­rate at­tack off in Gulf of Paria

The at­tack on the Car­li Bay fish­er­men has been de­scribed as one of the most bar­bar­ic acts of pira­cy and sparked cries from across the coun­try for jus­tice for the mur­dered men and their fam­i­lies.

The men had gone out on one of their night­ly fish­ing ex­pe­di­tions in six dif­fer­ent boats.

Nine of them were forced to jump out of their boats by gun-tot­ing ban­dits, who al­so beat them se­vere­ly.

To date, the bod­ies of Hem­raj “Alex” Sook­nanan, 18, Bran­don “Cur­ry” Kissoon, 21, Shi­va “Aries” Ramdeo, 27, Anand Ram­per­sad, 39, and Leslie De Boulet, were re­cov­ered in the wa­ters off Point Fortin, Ce­dros, and La Brea.

Still un­ac­count­ed for are Justin Kissoon, 19, and Ja­son Bap­tiste, 30.

Ram­per­sad, a fa­ther of three, was stabbed twice.

Two oth­er fish­er­men, Rob­bie Jag­ger­nauth and Bri­an Seemu­n­gal man­aged to swim un­til they were res­cued by a pass­ing boat.

Three oth­er fish­er­men, who were not iden­ti­fied, were left in their boats al­though their en­gines were stolen.

When the news broke that there was a mass rob­bery at sea the next morn­ing, Coast Guard, po­lice and dozens of fish­er­men be­gan a search that has been on­go­ing since then.

Ram­per­sad’s body was found first, on Ju­ly 24, float­ing about a mile and a half away from the Car­li Bay fish­ing de­pot. Lat­er that day, De Boulet’s body was found float­ing near the Labid­co Port in La Brea.

On Ju­ly 26, the bod­ies of Ramdeo and Bran­don Kissoon were al­so found close to the Labid­co Port.

On Mon­day, ex­act­ly one week af­ter the at­tack, Sook­nanan’s body sur­faced in the Erin area.

Pres­i­dent of the Car­li Bay Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Im­ti­az Khan echoed the calls of the fam­i­lies for more ar­rests to be made.

“We don’t re­al­ly know how to feel right now, it is so very un­for­tu­nate that these peo­ple have lost their lives for the things they worked so hard for.”

Khan said the fam­i­lies were gath­er­ing for a can­dle­light vig­il yes­ter­day in ho­n­our of the de­ceased men.

He said the group will al­so be pray­ing that the bod­ies of Justin Kissoon and Ja­son Bap­tiste are found as their fam­i­lies are still seek­ing clo­sure.

Four charged for Car­li Bay at­tack

In the Cou­va Mag­is­trate’s Court yes­ter­day, Ka­reem Stanis­claus, of Sea Lots, in Port-of-Spain faced five mur­der charges.

Stanis­claus, 27, of Pro­duc­tion Dri­ve, was al­so charged with the at­tempt­ed mur­ders of Rob­bie Jag­ger­nauth and Bri­an Seemu­n­gal.

He ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles charged with the mur­ders of Anand Ram­per­sad, Leslie De Boulet, Bran­don Kissoon, Hem­raj Sook­nanan and Shi­va Ramdeo.

The vic­tims were among 12 fish­er­men from the Or­ange Val­ley area who were beat­en, robbed and forced to jump over­board their fish­ing ves­sels on Ju­ly 22. Two fish­er­men, Justin Kissoon and Ja­son Bap­tiste are still miss­ing.

He was joint­ly charged with an­oth­er Sea Lots res­i­dent, Shaquille Roberts, Mya Bowrin and Loy­ola John with six charges of rob­bery with vi­o­lence while armed with a gun and cut­lass­es.

Stanis­claus is not el­i­gi­ble for bail and Roberts, 25, was de­nied bail pend­ing a trace of his crim­i­nal record.

Bowrin was grant­ed $100,000 bail in court with her moth­er as sure­ty while John ap­peared in court on Wednes­day and was al­so grant­ed bail.