DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge is ad­mit­ting that there are some killings that can­not be pre­vent­ed, even un­der a State of Emer­gency. His com­ments come af­ter the mur­der of 12-year-old Mari­ah Seenath.

Seenath’s body was dis­cov­ered on Sat­ur­day near the Friend­ship Recre­ation Ground in Ste Madeleine, close to her Princes Town home.

Yes­ter­day, Sturge de­clined to spec­u­late on the cir­cum­stances of the teenag­er’s death, not­ing that the au­top­sy had not yet been com­plet­ed (at the time) or re­leased to the pub­lic. An au­top­sy lat­er con­firmed she died from blunt force trau­ma to the head.

How­ev­er, he said, Gov­ern­ment ef­forts to re­duce vi­o­lent crime could not elim­i­nate it en­tire­ly.

“There are cer­tain types of mur­ders that you can nev­er pre­vent,” he told Guardian Me­dia at the VIP Lounge at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged the shock and grief in the com­mu­ni­ty and coun­try at large but stressed that the ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mained com­mit­ted to tack­ling crime.

“The crime rate is not go­ing to be cut in half in four months,” he said. “But we have our sys­tems in place, and we have a very good com­mis­sion­er of po­lice. You’ve no­ticed from the sta­tis­tics that there has been a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in homi­cides and vi­o­lent crimes, and we hope to sus­tain that in the com­ing months and the years that fol­low.”

Sturge al­so ad­dressed mount­ing con­cerns among fish­er­men in south­west Trinidad, many of whom say they have avoid­ed ven­tur­ing near Venezue­lan wa­ters amid es­ca­lat­ing re­gion­al ten­sions and re­cent US airstrikes on boats al­leged­ly car­ry­ing drugs.

“One ought not to ven­ture out­side of their ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters,” he said. “Once they stay with­in their ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters, they have noth­ing to be con­cerned about.”

The De­fence Min­is­ter re­fused to com­ment on re­ports that the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter had held talks with gang lead­ers in prison pri­or to re­sign­ing as a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer to take up a ca­reer in pol­i­tics, say­ing on­ly that an of­fi­cial state­ment was ex­pect­ed.

Mean­while, Sturge con­firmed he had been briefed about threats made against Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing him­self, but said he could not per­son­al­ly file a re­port.

“Some­one from the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit came to me some time ago, and he’s the per­son who brought the threat to me,” he ex­plained. “If I’m not the per­son bring­ing the in­for­ma­tion for­ward, I can’t make the re­port. You might have to ask the com­mis­sion­er about the sta­tus of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”