Trinidad: Land dispute ends in murder

Undertakers and police officers remove the body of Nigel Charles from his garden at Coalmine, Sangre Grande, on Friday.
Undertakers and police officers remove the body of Nigel Charles from his garden at Coalmine, Sangre Grande, on Friday.

(Trinidad Guardian) A dis­pute over land is sus­pect­ed to be the mo­tive be­hind the mur­der of a Coalmine, San­gre Grande gar­den­er on Friday.

Po­lice said Nigel Charles, 39, a fa­ther of two, was con­front­ed by a gun­man who shot him to the head.

An eye­wit­ness said Charles, a fa­ther of two, was fill­ing wa­ter at the pipe in his gar­den around 7 am when a man, with his face was cov­ered, whipped out a gun and be­gan fir­ing at Charles.

The wit­ness said he heard Charles said “You go do me that boy” but the gun­man con­tin­ued to fire at Charles.

Brenda Lee, the wife of murder victim Nigel Charles, is consoled by friend at the murder scene on Friday.

Charles, the wit­ness said, at­tempt­ed to run away but fell to the ground af­ter col­lid­ing with a tree. The gun­man es­caped in the near­by bush­es.

One of Charles’ friends said there was an on­go­ing quar­rel for land and Charles had got­ten death threats on Thurs­day.

The vic­tim’s moth­er, Jean Charles, who re­sides at Va­len­cia, told Guardian Me­dia she left a house for her son be­cause of a fam­i­ly dis­pute about the in­her­i­tance of a par­cel of land.

She is hop­ing that those re­spon­si­ble for her son’s death would sur­ren­der to the po­lice.

The vic­tim’s wife, Bren­da Lee, said she had just reached work when she got a mes­sage from her el­dest son that her hus­band had been shot and killed.

“My co-work­er took me back home where I saw neigh­bours gath­ered look­ing down at the gar­den. When I looked I saw Charles ly­ing on the ground life­less. I hugged my two sons and wept,” she said.

“This is yet an­oth­er in­ci­dent where chil­dren are left fa­ther­less be­cause of some ruth­less gun­man,” she said.

A team of po­lice of­fi­cers from San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion led by Supt Kennedy De­osaran, In­sp Ju­ri and Sgt Ed­wards re­spond­ed to the re­port.

The killing of Charles brings the num­ber of mur­ders for the year to 83.

Man crit­i­cal af­ter shot in bed

In an un­re­lat­ed shoot­ing on Thurs­day night, Os­ei Clarke, 34 of Damarie Hill, Guaico, who sells wa­ter on the high­way was shot by two armed men while in bed with his girl­friend.

Po­lice re­port­ed around 9.30 pm on Thurs­day night Clarke and his 26-year-old girl­friend were in the bed­room when the heard foot­steps in the yard. The gun­men forced open a door and shot Clarke.

Clarke was tak­en to San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal where he un­der­went emer­gency surgery and was ward­ed at the In­ten­sive Care Unit in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion.