An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

An au­top­sy per­formed on the body of act­ing Cpl Anusha Ever­s­ley, who was found dead in the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion on Sun­day, has found that she was stran­gled and al­so suf­fered blunt and sharp force trau­mat­ic in­juries (stab and chop wounds).

This was re­vealed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro yes­ter­day, as he cor­rect­ed an ear­li­er re­port that she may have been shot in the neck.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Gue­var­ro gave away very lit­tle else, as he said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Ever­s­ley’s mur­der and the theft of a cache of arms and am­mu­ni­tion from the sta­tion was con­tin­u­ing apace.

He con­firmed that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had so far re­cov­ered a to­tal of 38 firearms and 929 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion stolen by the per­pe­tra­tors. This fol­lowed two sep­a­rate seizures in south Trinidad yes­ter­day.

The re­cov­ered weapons in­clud­ed one MPX sub­ma­chine gun; one shot­gun; one re­volver and 35 pis­tols. In ad­di­tion, 929 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, com­pris­ing 900 rounds of 9mm; ten rounds of .38 cal­i­bre and ten shot­gun car­tridges were re­cov­ered.

Ever­s­ley, 42, was dis­cov­ered dead at the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Head­quar­ters, La­dy Hailes Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do, around 4.40 am on Sun­day. She was a moth­er of three chil­dren, aged 18, 15 and sev­en, and had over 19 years of ser­vice.

It was al­leged that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 62 guns and 4,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion were stolen from the sta­tion’s ar­moury.

Asked yes­ter­day just how many firearms and am­mu­ni­tion were stolen dur­ing the heist, Gue­var­ro said, “At this point in time, un­for­tu­nate­ly, I’ll be un­able to say as we are still con­tin­u­ing the au­dit. I have tasked the of­fi­cers of the po­lice ar­moury to do that au­dit and it should be com­plet­ed in a day or two.”

Say­ing six men be­tween the ages of 16-33 have so far been de­tained in con­nec­tion with the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Gue­var­ro said, “As en­quiries progress, fur­ther changes in per­sons in cus­tody are ex­pect­ed. Fur­ther in­ter­views with mu­nic­i­pal po­lice col­leagues of the de­ceased of­fi­cer are on­go­ing as in­ves­ti­ga­tors seek to de­ter­mine any and all pos­si­bil­i­ties of ac­com­plices.”

The TTPS, in a re­lease yes­ter­day, con­firmed the six de­tainees in­clud­ed two mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers, two fe­male civil­ians and two male civil­ians. Two women and one man de­tained on Sun­day have since been re­leased.

Main­tain­ing that Sun­day’s in­ci­dent was a “shock­ing mo­ment” for the na­tion, Gue­var­ro in­sist­ed, “The heist of sev­er­al weapons and am­mu­ni­tion re­mains an ex­treme con­cern to the TTPS.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing this sit­u­a­tion was un­prece­dent­ed, the CoP said in an at­tempt to pre­vent such sit­u­a­tions from re­cur­ring, the TTPS was pur­su­ing sev­er­al in­ter­ven­tions aimed at not on­ly the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice but across the wider mu­nic­i­pal ser­vice.

“These mea­sures will seek to ad­dress ex­ist­ing gaps and im­ple­ment sig­nif­i­cant changes to safe­guard against re­oc­cur­rences of this na­ture. Im­me­di­ate re­forms are be­ing in­tro­duced to strength­en firearm stor­age and en­sure strict ad­her­ence to rel­e­vant poli­cies and stand­ing or­ders,” he said.

Pressed for up­dates on the num­ber of of­fi­cers who were in the sta­tion at the time of the at­tack on Ever­s­ley and whether she had been in state of un­dress when found, Gue­var­ro said three peo­ple, in­clud­ing the de­ceased of­fi­cer, were present.

“We are still look­ing at video ev­i­dence that is com­ing to hand to de­ter­mine whether or not a fourth per­son was present or not,” he said.

Main­tain­ing his ini­tial con­vic­tion about the in­ci­dent, Gue­var­ro said, “I main­tain that it was not a tar­get­ed at­tack against law en­force­ment and that the sit­u­a­tion, as we cur­rent­ly un­der­stand, is a sit­u­a­tion that has nev­er oc­curred be­fore in Trinidad. Hope­ful­ly, by our in­ter­ven­tions and the tac­tics and strate­gies we are putting in place, it will not oc­cur again.”

The CoP al­so came in for blows from mem­bers of the pub­lic, who claimed his de­scrip­tion of the in­ci­dent on Sun­day was in­sen­si­tive, af­ter he re­ferred to it as mere­ly a “one-off sit­u­a­tion.”

Re­spond­ing to this yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro apol­o­gised to any­one he may have an­gered.

He said, “I apol­o­gise to the mem­bers of the pub­lic if any­one felt that it was in­sen­si­tive. I def­i­nite­ly be­lieved that this sit­u­a­tion is one that has nev­er oc­curred, as I men­tioned in the past, and be­cause of the strate­gies and tac­tics that we’ll be in­putting in fu­ture, we hope that this will nev­er oc­cur again. So on that ba­sis, I made the state­ment of be­ing a one-off sit­u­a­tion.”