Derek Achong

Two able-bod­ied sea­men at­tached to the T&T Coast Guard yes­ter­day re­mained ward­ed at hos­pi­tal af­ter an in­ci­dent on Sat­ur­day in Curepe in which they were se­vere­ly beat­en by a gang of armed men. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, at around 4.30 am, the sea­men, Kir­by Kent, of Canaan, To­ba­go, and Philbert Sci­pio of Carn­bee Vil­lage, To­ba­go, both 22, were walk­ing along Bellsmythe Street, Curepe, when they were con­front­ed by a group of men from the area said to be be­tween the ages of 18 and 25. Po­lice said the men, who were car­ry­ing met­al pipes and oth­er im­pro­vised weapons, sur­round­ed the off-du­ty sea­men. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the men then be­gan to beat the sea­men about their bod­ies.

Af­ter a strug­gle which re­port­ed­ly last­ed sev­er­al min­utes, the group scat­tered from the scene on foot, leav­ing the bat­tered and blood­ied sea­men at the side of the road. The in­jured of­fi­cers were then as­sist­ed by pedes­tri­ans and res­i­dents, who took them to Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, and re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to po­lice. Kent was treat­ed and dis­charged, while Sci­pio was trans­ferred to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he re­mained ward­ed up to late yes­ter­day evening in a crit­i­cal but sta­ble con­di­tion. A mo­tive has yet to be es­tab­lished for the at­tack, but the T&T Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that the in­ci­dent might be con­nect­ed to a dis­pute over a woman from the area.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for com­ment, Coast Guard pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Lieu­tenant Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste, con­firmed the in­ci­dent. He said that two in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Staubles Bay, Coast Guard base were as­signed to con­duct a pri­vate in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Jean-Bap­tiste said that on Sat­ur­day evening, the in­ves­ti­ga­tors de­tained two sus­pects near to where the in­ci­dent oc­curred. The men were then hand­ed over to of­fi­cers of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion who are con­tin­u­ing in­quires. Po­lice said that the iden­ti­ties of the oth­er three sus­pects were known to them and ar­rests were im­mi­nent.