Jensen La Vende

A pris­on­er, await­ing tri­al for mur­der,who es­caped from prison on Wednes­day,died in hos­pi­tal one day af­ter his­re­cap­ture.Po­lice said Steven Ab­dool, 23, an­dan­oth­er man es­caped from the re­mand­fa­cil­i­ty at the Gold­en Grove Prison,Arou­ca, around 2.30 am on Wednes­dayafter they sawed through bars of theirhold­ing cell.They cut through the wire fencin­gand ran away but prison au­thor­i­ties­re­cap­tured them about 20 min­utes lat­er.

Ab­dool's moth­er, Veena Ab­dool, saidyes­ter­day she be­lieved her son was beat­en­to death and want­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion­in­to his death.In a tele­phone in­ter­view, pub­lic in­for­ma­tionof­fi­cer for the pris­ons ser­vice,Wen­dell Bom­part, said the prison of­fi­cer­shad to use nec­es­sary force to ap­pre­hendthe es­capees who were armed and­dan­ger­ous.

He said af­ter be­ing re­cap­turedthe men were seen by the prison'smed­ical team, then trans­ferred to theAri­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty and then to theEr­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex,Mt Hope, where Ab­dool died just­be­fore 2 pm on Thurs­day."It is un­for­tu­nate if he died as a re­sultof the in­juries sus­tained (while be­in­gre­cap­tured).

How­ev­er, the prison of­fi­cer­shave a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to both fel­low­in­mates and the pub­lic to en­sure their­safe­ty," he added Bom­part added that­both the es­cape and Ab­dool's death­would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed as the Pris­on­sSer­vice has a use-of-force pol­i­cy in­place. He said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to theescape was be­ing led by a se­nior su­per­in­ten­den­t­who was se­lect­ed by Com­mis­sionerof Pris­ons Mar­tin Mar­tinez.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view with the T&TGuardian, Veena Ab­dool said her son­was called Tear Drop be­cause of thetat­too be­neath his eye and was a lon­er­who kept to him­self. She added he wasa healthy child be­fore be­ing ar­rest­ed.Ab­dool, of Pranz Gar­den, Clax­ton­Bay, was ac­cused of mur­der­ing se­cu­ri­ty­guard Hol­ly Matthews on Au­gust 6,2011 at San Fer­nan­do/Siparia Erin Road,Philip­pine.Matthews, 47, of Chin Chin Road,Cunu­pia, was shot in the head whileon du­ty at Parkview Su­per­mar­ket,Philip­pine.

He was a sergeant with Pen­tagon­Se­cu­ri­ty. His killers al­so took­Math­ews' gun.The au­top­sy on Ab­dool will take placeon Mon­day, as the Foren­sic Sci­ence­Cen­tre, St James. A pre­lim­i­nary ex­am­i­na­tionof his body sug­gest­ed he may­have died as a re­sult of bone mar­rowem­bolism. The T&T Guardian was told­Ab­dool suf­fered no in­ter­nal bleed­ing,ac­cord­ing to his hos­pi­tal med­ical­records, which showed at least three­CT scans were done on him be­fore hedied.