Mark Bas­sant

Homi­cide de­tec­tives say the three mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG) Spe­cial Naval Unit (SNU) re­main in po­lice cus­tody in re­la­tion to the kid­nap­ping and mur­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volv­ing 34-year-old Mar­aval res­i­dent Ted­dy Richards Sylvester.

Sources close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said it was “on­go­ing” and the men are ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned ex­ten­sive­ly over the next few days about the death of Sylvester, whose body was found dumped along Cadet Road in Pe­tit Val­ley on Jan­u­ary 13, four days af­ter he was kid­napped.

Ac­cord­ing to se­nior po­lice sources, the men could face charges of mur­der, kid­nap­ping and ag­gra­vat­ed as­sault. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) con­firmed in a brief me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day that the men were as­sist­ing in a homi­cide case that oc­curred ear­li­er this month but pro­vid­ed no fur­ther de­tails.

The trio, who are all mem­bers of the SNU and part of the se­cu­ri­ty de­tail of Chief of De­fence Staff (CDS) Dar­ryl Daniel, were ap­pre­hend­ed on Wednes­day morn­ing, fol­low­ing a joint army and po­lice op­er­a­tion out­side the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) Head­quar­ters in Ch­aguara­mas, short­ly af­ter they dropped off the CDS at his of­fice.

The men, all in their thir­ties, are from Care­nage, Barataria, and St Ann’s and are em­ployed with the TTCG - one as a writer and the oth­er two as sailors.

Fol­low­ing their ar­rest, po­lice con­duct­ed ex­ten­sive search­es of their ve­hi­cles at Camp Og­den, as well as their lock­ers at the Ch­aguara­mas base. Sources say search war­rants were al­so ex­e­cut­ed at their re­spec­tive homes over the last 48 hours.

Sylvester was kid­napped on Jan­u­ary 8 out­side his Cameron Hill home in Mar­aval by four men dressed in tac­ti­cal uni­form with the mark­ings “Po­lice” on their chests and thrown in­to a Black Nis­san X-Trail ve­hi­cle be­fore they drove off. Sylvester’s body was found four days lat­er.

Po­lice sources say the sus­pects ar­rived at work on Jan­u­ary 9 and af­ter es­cort­ing the CDS to his of­fice in Ch­aguara­mas, left to go to the Cameron Hill area, where they al­leged­ly kid­napped Sylvester.