SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Ag Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tion Curt Si­mon yes­ter­day praised God and the in­ves­ti­ga­tors whose work led to two men be­ing ar­rest­ed and charged for the mur­ders of four mem­bers of the Pe­terkin fam­i­ly at their home in Heights of Gua­napo, Ari­ma.

Jalani Rivers, 22, and Jodel Noel, 24, have been joint­ly charged with the mur­ders of the Pe­terkin sib­lings on Sep­tem­ber 21.The charges were laid yes­ter­day by act­ing In­sp Si­mon of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Re­gion Two.

The men were al­so charged with five counts of pos­ses­sion of a firearm, pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion and shoot­ing with in­tent fol­low­ing ad­vice re­ceived from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), Roger Gas­pard, SC.

They are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear vir­tu­al­ly be­fore an Ari­ma mag­is­trate to­day.

The vic­tims, Faith Pe­terkin, 10, Ar­i­an­na Pe­terkin, 14, Shain Pe­terkin, 17 and Tiffany Pe­terkin, 19, were fa­tal­ly shot when gun­men in­vad­ed their home short­ly af­ter mid­night.

Five oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing a 14-year-old girl, were in­jured in the at­tack which oc­cured just af­ter mid­night on Sep­tem­ber 21.

Rivers and Noel are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear vir­tu­al­ly be­fore an Ari­ma mag­is­trate to­day.

A re­lease from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) yes­ter­day stat­ed that at 12.30 am on Sep­tem­ber 21, of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a re­port of loud ex­plo­sions heard at La Re­treat Ex­ten­sion, Heights of Gua­napo, Ari­ma.

Up­on ar­rival, po­lice were di­rect­ed to a house where they found the bod­ies of nine peo­ple, all suf­fer­ing from gun­shot wounds. The in­jured were tak­en to hos­pi­tal as they showed signs of life.

The sib­lings’ mur­ders sparked na­tion­wide out­rage and there had been a strong po­lice re­sponse with pa­trols, sur­veil­lance ex­er­cis­es and search­es in sev­er­al parts of Ari­ma.

Last Mon­day, po­lice de­tained three men who they said might have in­for­ma­tion on the quadru­ple mur­ders fol­low­ing an ear­ly morn­ing raid at a shed in Aripo.

Of­fi­cers from the Pin­to Road Po­lice Post and North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force vis­it­ed a house off Morne Pouis Road, Aripo, at 3.30 am and found three men—ages 34, 24 and 21 years—who were want­ed in con­nec­tion with sev­er­al shoot­ings, wound­ings and mur­ders in Ari­ma.

Com­ment­ing briefly yes­ter­day, Si­mon said he was pleased with the out­come of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the killings.

“To see how it pro­gressed... the in­tri­ca­tion and the in­tel­li­gence came to­geth­er and the in­ves­ti­ga­tors were able to pre­fer charges. It went be­fore the DPP and we got the ad­vice to charge in both in­stances,” he said.

Si­mon said when the charges were laid, the head of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions gave thanks to God.

“And I joined him in that. I say all the glo­ry to God. You know this thing in­volved chil­dren. The pain and trau­ma that came with it,” he said.

Anisa Ram­per­sad, the moth­er of the four mur­dered sib­lings, did not want to com­ment on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments in the case.

“I pre­fer not to talk to the me­dia at this time,” she said when con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day.