Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter be­ing shot sev­en times dur­ing a po­lice op­er­a­tion in Beetham Gar­dens sev­en years ago, po­lice of­fi­cer Adri­an Moreno re-eval­u­at­ed his life and ca­reer path.

The one-time as­pir­ing en­gi­neer gave up that dream and de­cid­ed to pur­sue law af­ter the shoot­ing in­ci­dent.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with Cpl Moreno out­side the St James Po­lice Sta­tion last Tues­day, about his jour­ney from be­ing un­able to use his right hand fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, to be­ing called to the bar and his hopes of im­prov­ing the po­lice ser­vice with his new­ly found pas­sion.

The el­dest of three chil­dren grow­ing up in Thoma­sine Street, Laven­tille, Moreno said he need­ed to “step up” to as­sist his sin­gle moth­er to care for the fam­i­ly. Dis­ci­plined through his back­ground in karate, the now 30-year-old cast a wide net, ap­ply­ing to every arm of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. The TTPS was the first to call, and he an­swered.

“Grow­ing up in Laven­tille was rough, so to stay off the streets, I got in­volved in karate through a neigh­bour who was do­ing it. I de­cid­ed to try, and I found that my sport was not crick­et or foot­ball,” he said.

Coached by Wes­ley Dex­ter Shim and An­tho­ny Pe­ters, he rose from a trainee to rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try at a na­tion­al lev­el at 15 on the ju­nior team and then mak­ing the se­nior team at 18.

He re­called see­ing his moth­er “stretch every­thing” grow­ing up, things were “ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult” for her as a sin­gle par­ent.

Al­though he was op­er­at­ing with the mantra of pro­tect­ing and serv­ing with pride, Moreno was still in­ter­est­ed in en­gi­neer­ing.

How­ev­er, that all changed on the night of Au­gust 4, 2016.

Po­lice re­port­ed then that Moreno and WPC Rachel George were shot by “un­known as­sailants” dur­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise at Hell Yard, Beetham Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain.

In a me­dia re­lease then, the TTPS said West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force of­fi­cers went to Beetham Gar­dens at 7.20 pm in search of sus­pects con­cern­ing a break-in at Amer­i­can Stores, West­ern Main Road, St James. The ban­dits took $100,000 worth of items. Dur­ing their search, the of­fi­cers were shot with an as­sault ri­fle.

Moreno was hit six times. He was grazed to the back of the head, one shot went through his right ear; an­oth­er in the left palm, frac­tur­ing his ring and lit­tle fin­gers; an­oth­er in the right bi­ceps, shat­ter­ing the humerus; and an­oth­er in the right fore­arm.

Had it not been for his bul­let­proof vest, he would have been shot twice in the chest and prob­a­bly not be alive to­day.

George was shot in the left foot.

Moreno said, “I had two gun­shots to my right arm, one to my fore­arm, one to my bi­cep, this one broke the humerus, and this was the worst or the most trau­mat­ic in­jury. I had ra­di­al nerve pal­sy from this in­jury. My right hand was non-func­tion­al for al­most a year. I did three surg­eries to save my right hand.”

He re­called that it was dur­ing this pe­ri­od of al­most a year, re­learn­ing to brush his teeth, bathe and dress him­self, that he re­alised en­gi­neer­ing was no longer a dream but a fan­ta­sy.

Search­ing for some­thing to raise him out of the slump he found him­self in, he told him­self he did not need his hand to be an at­tor­ney. He qual­i­fied him­self and en­rolled in the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), where he earned his bach­e­lor’s de­gree in law. He then earned his Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion Course (LEC) at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School and qual­i­fied him­self as an at­tor­ney.

“When I was go­ing through every­thing, and I couldn’t write, I couldn’t use my right hand, I asked what could be the best thing to do? Be­cause I couldn’t go in­to med­i­cine. I couldn’t do en­gi­neer­ing any­more. But you could speak. An at­tor­ney us­es his mouth and his eyes to read, and the com­put­er can tran­scribe what you say.”

The time spent on in­jury leave not on­ly redi­rect­ed his ca­reer path but deep­ened his faith.

A proud Catholic, Moreno said he at­tend­ed St There­sa’s Catholic Church in Wood­brook and gave back to God and has con­tin­ued his re­li­gious jour­ney.

Mar­ry­ing law and law en­force­ment to bet­ter T&T

Re­call­ing the time spent hav­ing to de­pend on his moth­er to care for him while he had no mo­bil­i­ty in his right hand, Moreno summed it up to, “it was re­al­ly, re­al­ly hard, think­ing back on it now.”

“I did three surg­eries al­to­geth­er. The first one was the ex­ter­nal fix, that didn’t work be­cause the in­jury was so bad, it didn’t work. Then they at­tempt­ed to do a bone graft. That didn’t work! And the last surgery, the op­er­a­tion they de­cid­ed was the last at­tempt to save the hand or make it some­what bet­ter, was to nail it and that is what I cur­rent­ly have.”

The screw from his shoul­der through the humerus means he is forced to ex­plain his con­di­tion when go­ing through met­al de­tec­tors. Cold weath­er and tem­per­a­ture re­sult in oc­ca­sion­al pain. He was al­so banned from karate. Af­ter years of rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try in karate and earn­ing the ti­tle of sec­ond-de­gree Shotokan karate mas­ter, Moreno is now re­strict­ed to teach­ing the sport be­cause of his in­juries.

Asked whether he con­sid­ered re­sign­ing out of cau­tion that he may be shot again, Moreno, with a stern look, said he could not al­low fear to in­flu­ence him, as that would not on­ly jeop­ar­dise his life but the team he leads on po­lice ex­er­cis­es.

“The on­ly thing I fear is God. I don’t want to live my life like that. I am more cau­tious of be­ing in­jured again, but I am not fear­ful. Go­ing in­to any sit­u­a­tion with fear, I am putting the whole team at risk.”

Since be­ing called to the Bar, he has ap­plied to be trans­ferred out of the West­ern Di­vi­sion and be­come a le­gal of­fi­cer, guid­ing the TTPS. He said his aim now is to use his new skills to bet­ter the T&TPS with the in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the law to prof­fer the right charges to sus­pects.