Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Prison of­fi­cer Govin­dra Bal­go­b­in, who was shot by gun­men dur­ing an am­bush in Arou­ca on Fri­day night, is now co­her­ent and speak­ing with rel­a­tives.

This was con­firmed by Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion gen­er­al sec­re­tary Lester Lo­gie in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“His fam­i­ly vis­it­ed and spoke to him to­day (yes­ter­day), so he is co­her­ent. How­ev­er, the con­cern is he lost a lot of blood and feel­ings and, well, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dam­age and move­ment in his low­er limbs. So, we are con­cerned about that. I mean, it could have been worse, but he’s still with us,” Lo­gie said.

Lo­gie said while Bal­go­b­in is able to com­mu­ni­cate with rel­a­tives, he is “not out of the woods yet.”

He added that the at­tack against Bal­go­b­in came be­cause of an in­ter­ac­tion be­tween a woman and a prison of­fi­cer at the Port-of-Spain prison fol­low­ing a search at the prison. He said some 31 cell­phones were seized from one cell dur­ing that search.

Prison sources be­lieve the at­tack may have been linked to the woman’s failed at­tempt to vis­it the Port-of-Spain Prison last week.

Prison of­fi­cials said a fe­male rel­a­tive of an in­mate at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, where Bal­go­b­in is sta­tioned, had an al­ter­ca­tion with an of­fi­cer, lead­ing to the can­cel­la­tion of her vis­it in PoS.

Prison sources said the al­ter­ca­tion be­tween the male prison of­fi­cer and the fe­male vis­i­tor be­came phys­i­cal.

Lo­gie is now call­ing on the state to im­prove con­di­tions in­side the pris­ons, par­tic­u­lar­ly func­tion­al cam­eras. He said cam­eras would erase the “he say, she say,” as the woman, who was ar­rest­ed by po­lice, claimed the of­fi­cer was the ag­gres­sor, while the of­fi­cer is deny­ing the claim.

“I want to call on the state to have a look at the cam­eras, get­ting back cam­eras in the var­i­ous pris­ons. Be­cause when an in­ci­dent like this hap­pens, it’s al­ways your word against the oth­er per­son’s word. We had cam­eras work­ing in Port-of-Spain be­fore. Now, we don’t have any. Un­der the last gov­ern­ment, they in­di­cat­ed that they were go­ing to put back in cam­eras in the prison, but we haven’t seen any move­ment on that since.”

On Sat­ur­day, Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don told Guardian Me­dia he is hope­ful their con­cerns will be ad­dressed.

“We are ap­peal­ing to our new min­is­ter, that we are pre­pared to work along with him and the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress these is­sues, and we ver­i­ly be­lieve that if there is any time in our his­to­ry where we can achieve the changes that are nec­es­sary to se­cure prison of­fi­cers and their fam­i­lies, we be­lieve it is un­der this cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Gor­don said.

Lo­gie’s com­ments came hours af­ter both Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and a rel­a­tive had in­di­cat­ed that Bal­go­b­in was still crit­i­cal in the High De­pen­den­cy Unit of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex at Mt Hope.

The rel­a­tive, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, had asked that na­tion pray for Bal­go­b­in, adding that he did not want to speak much on the is­sue.

“Every­one knows what’s go­ing on with prison of­fi­cers and the threats they’re un­der. Let’s just get prayers go­ing out to the in­di­vid­ual for a speedy re­cov­ery be­cause he is still crit­i­cal,” the rel­a­tive said.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro al­so spoke of Bal­go­b­in’s con­di­tion.

“The prison of­fi­cer who was tar­get­ed in a bru­tal at­tack on June 20 re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal. We con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor his sta­tus close­ly and ex­tend our full sup­port to his fam­i­ly dur­ing this ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult time.”

He added: “We ask the na­tion to unite in sol­i­dar­i­ty and prayer for his re­cov­ery; stand­ing not on­ly with his loved ones but al­so with his col­leagues in the pris­ons ser­vice and the wider law en­force­ment fam­i­ly, who have been deeply af­fect­ed by this in­ci­dent.”

Gue­var­ro said one of two men ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with Bal­go­b­in’s shoot­ing is al­so list­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

“One sus­pect re­mains hos­pi­talised in crit­i­cal con­di­tion un­der po­lice guard, while the oth­er is cur­rent­ly as­sist­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors. The TTPS, in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pris­ons Ser­vice, has ac­ti­vat­ed sev­er­al tac­ti­cal ini­tia­tives in re­sponse to this most re­cent at­tack,” Gue­var­ro said.

“How­ev­er, giv­en the sen­si­tive and on­go­ing na­ture of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate at this time to com­ment fur­ther on op­er­a­tional strate­gies or in­ves­tiga­tive leads. We al­so urge the pub­lic to con­tin­ue part­ner­ing with the po­lice and share in­for­ma­tion which can en­sure that all the per­sons in­volved in this heinous act are brought to jus­tice.”

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 8.25 pm on Fri­day, Bal­go­b­in, 38, of Bar­rack­pore, was head­ing home when he was am­bushed and shot as he stopped along Or­ange Grove Road, Arou­ca. Gun­men in a Nis­san Wingroad pulled along­side him and opened fire.

In their at­tempt to es­cape mo­ments lat­er, how­ev­er, the dri­ver lost con­trol of the get­away ve­hi­cle, crash­ing in­to a light pole along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way. One of the at­tack­ers was thrown out of the car, while an­oth­er was ar­rest­ed short­ly af­ter. A hand­gun and cell­phone were re­cov­ered from the ve­hi­cle.