Autopsy: Shot victim dumped alive in river

Kendell “Chinee” Thomas was grabbed from a maxi-taxi on Wednesday morning defending his sister but could not defend himself from his attackers. Thomas was shot three times, twice in the right arm. An autopsy at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, yesterday revealed they were defensive wounds. He was also shot once in the head. The bullet entered between his eyebrows, the autopsy revealed.

After he was shot, Thomas’ legs were tied with cables and a concrete block attached to them before he was thrown into the river that runs south near Sixth Street, Beetham Gardens. He was still breathing when his killers threw him in, as the autopsy report showed he had inhaled mud. 

The body of the 24-year-old Thomas was found in the murky water in the canal near Sixth Street after police received information that he might have been dumped there on Thursday afternoon. Police had been searching for Thomas since early Wednesday after receiving reports that he was snatched. Thomas, a passenger in a maxi-taxi heading into Port-of-Spain, was dragged out of it at 19th Street, Beetham Gardens, by gunmen when it stopped to drop off two passengers around 1.30 am. 

Thomas’ sister Sheena Charles, who was also in the maxi, said her brother was grabbed after he tried to protect her from the bandits, one of whom broke an arm in his bid to escape. Charles told the Guardian her brother and friend Anna Lyons were in the back seat of the maxi with her when her brother began asking the bandits, “Wha is dah one?” She said the men took her chain and tried to take her brother’s. Another of the bandits ordered everyone out of the maxi and Thomas, using his body, protected her from being dragged out.

Charles said a man in the front seat then told the driver to drive off and he complied. Police have held five men, one of whom was the 14-year-old who broke his arm after falling out of the moving maxi. Thomas’ mother Sheila Charles said, in a telephone interview, “I wish that the law do something very urgent about them. Don’t waste no time at all. They deserve to be put away.” She said she was very proud of her son who died as he defended his younger sister.

“I am very, very proud of him. That is the type of person he was. He will do anything to help anybody,” Charles said of her firstborn son.