Resh­ma Ra­goonath

When a man turned up at her doorstep with two bul­lets which he vowed to use to kill her son, Oropouche moth­er De­bra Jef­frey dis­missed the threat as "ole talk." How­ev­er, less than 24 hours lat­er her worst fears be­came a re­al­i­ty when her 30-year-old son, Adio "Chicky" Julien, was gunned down and dumped in a pond near their Span­ish Mel Road, Berridge Gar­den Road home. Yes­ter­day Jef­frey, 51, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian in an in­ter­view at her home, said on Tues­day night one of her son's for­mer school friends came to their home, showed her two bul­lets and told her, "Moms, no dis­re­spect eh but this two bul­let is for your son. I go­ing to kill him."

The moth­er of six said she did not re­port the threat to the po­lice. "I did not be­lieve him. They went to school to­geth­er. I say they woul­da thrash it out. I tell him, 'You know my moth­er just die.

How you could tell me you go­ing to do that to my child.' I thought they woul­da work that out. When I tell Adio he stop talk­ing. He re­main qui­et. Whole night we wake out think­ing he will come and do that," the woman said. Jef­frey said on Wednes­day around 7.10 pm her son came home with a bag con­tain­ing a loaf of bread, a pair of rub­ber slip­pers and a can of fly spray which he placed on their wash­ing ma­chine and left. "Not even a good minute af­ter he walk down the road I hear one sin­gle gun­shot and that was it. When I hear the gun­shot I know it was him," she sobbed. Jef­frey said she ran out the house to search for Julien. Jef­frey fought back her tears as she re­count­ed her des­per­ate search for her son. She said there are no street­lights in the area lead­ing to the pond so she had to use her cell­phone light to fol­low a trail of blood to find Julien. "We fol­low the blood on the ground to see where he bleed­ing and it stop by the pond. We say he may be fall in. I call out, "Chicky, Chicky, an­swer your moth­er, nah. I say, 'an­swer me, nah," Jef­frey cried. She said they con­tact­ed the po­lice and they came to as­sist in the search but Julien was not found.

Po­lice re­ports state that around 9.20 pm in­ves­ti­ga­tor PC Mil­ford Prince and oth­er of­fi­cers were on pa­trol when they re­ceived the re­port of the shoot­ing in the area and that Julien was miss­ing. The of­fi­cers found a pair of san­dals 200 feet away from Julien's home and an emp­ty Win­ches­ter car­tridge. They al­so found a trail of blood which they fol­lowed to the pond. The grassy area around the pond was al­so tram­pled. Po­lice sus­pect Julien ran a short dis­tance af­ter be­ing shot and col­lapsed. His at­tack­er then car­ried his body to the pond and dis­posed of it. Yes­ter­day of­fi­cers of the Oropouche po­lice sta­tion re­turned to the area and pumped wa­ter out of the ten-feet deep/15-feet in di­am­e­ter pond which is used by gar­den­ers to wa­ter their crops. Around 10.30 am they found Julien's se­mi nude body ly­ing on its side stuck in the mud. One gun­shot wound was seen on his neck. Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Car­mona vis­it­ed the scene yes­ter­day and or­dered the re­moval of the body. South West­ern po­lice, led by In­spec­tor Seedarie, Cpl Bil­ly Ram­sun­dar and PC Adesh Ram­lochan were al­so present

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.