Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

State wit­ness Jarvis Mark and his fam­i­ly have gone in­to hid­ing af­ter gun­men rid­dled his house and car with bul­lets on Mon­day night.

Mark, 26, has been pre­dict­ing that he would be gunned down af­ter re­ceiv­ing death threats.

He is the State's main wit­ness in a case against a po­lice of­fi­cer who was charged for al­leged­ly rent­ing out his ser­vice firearm to crim­i­nals.

The mat­ter is be­fore the court.

Re­call­ing the shoot­ing in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, Mark said he was at home with his sis­ter when he heard a loud ex­plo­sion. "At first, I did not think that it was gun­shots, but then I heard a sec­ond ex­plo­sion and the glass win­dows shat­tered," Mark said.

Point­ing to the bul­let-rid­dled win­dows, Mark said the gun­men al­so at­tempt­ed to blow up his rent­ed car be­cause they tar­get­ed the area of the gas tank.

Mark said the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau promised to keep him safe, but they re­neged on the agree­ment. He said he sought help from head of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph, last week, re­quest­ing help to fly his fam­i­ly out of T&T.

Mark said he met Man­ning at his con­stituen­cy of­fice last Thurs­day and Man­ning arranged a meet­ing for him with Joseph.

"Mr Joseph told me that it made no sense for me to speak to him and he re­ferred the mat­ter to Brigadier Gen­er­al (Pe­ter) Joseph," he said.

"I told Brigadier Joseph that I want to be shipped out be­cause I do not trust the wit­ness pro­tec­tion, but no­body has helped me."