Trinidad: Bandits kill man helping neighbour with camera

 (Trinidad Guardian) The son of a re­tired po­lice su­per­in­ten­dent was shot dead while ly­ing on the ground next to his fa­ther, in a hold-up in Freeport Wednes­day night.

Cha­ran­dev “Cha­ran” Singh, 24, was as­sist­ing an el­der­ly neigh­bour with her se­cu­ri­ty sur­veil­lance cam­eras, af­ter an in­trud­er jumped her gate, stripped him­self naked and made his way to the back of her home.

Singh and his fa­ther, re­tired su­per­in­ten­dent Matu­ra Singh, their neigh­bour Mary Ann Ed­mund, 67, and one of her cousins were stand­ing in her yard along Chick­land in Freeport, talk­ing, when two gun­men ran in­to the yard and an­nounced a hold-up. The men or­dered all of them to lie down on the ground.

Min­utes af­ter, the men fired sev­er­al gun­shots and Singh was shot three times in the chest.

He died while un­der­go­ing treat­ment at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.

Singh was ly­ing next to his fa­ther when he was shot. Singh’s fa­ther sub­se­quent­ly drew his li­censed firearm and shot at the ban­dits, how­ev­er, they man­aged to es­cape. The in­ci­dent oc­curred at about 8.50 pm on Wednes­day just across the road from where Singh lived with his par­ents and sis­ter at San Fran­cis­co Land Set­tle­ment.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Ed­mund’s sis­ter, Louisa Young de­scribed the ban­dits as “trig­ger hap­py.”

She said the men asked for the keys to a car in her yard from her cousin. She added that af­ter the shoot­ing the gun­men left with­out tak­ing her cousin’s car.

Young said her sis­ter is blam­ing her­self for what hap­pened to Singh. How­ev­er, she is blam­ing the po­lice of the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion for not re­spond­ing to their SOS call when a known drug ad­dict jumped their gate, stripped naked and walked to the back of their prop­er­ty which has two oth­er hous­es and ex­it­ed on the oth­er side.

“We called the po­lice and they said they had a pa­trol out in Wa­ter­loo and they couldn’t come to us…that was about 8 pm. If the po­lice did come that time this would have nev­er hap­pened. That’s when Mary Ann called the boy fa­ther to come across and he and his son came over for his son to check the cam­eras, “ Young said.

Young said the gun­men al­so shot at Matu­ra and Mary Ann but missed. One of the bul­lets struck a glass win­dow and be­came lodged in a com­put­er.

Lament­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try she said, “Any­one can come here and stay. But we can’t go away and stay. We aways have to be look­ing over our shoul­der. Why this have to be so? Look how this in­no­cent child get killed…he was such a nice child.”

A team of po­lice of­fi­cers was ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the scene to col­lect sur­veil­lance footage from the scene in a bid to as­sist in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.