An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice have giv­en rob­bery as the mo­tive for the grue­some killing of Garib Gor­ing in Freeport yes­ter­day but that is be­ing ques­tioned by his rel­a­tives who be­lieve jeal­ousy and greed were the rea­sons for his death.

The 44-year-old fa­ther of five and grand­fa­ther of four was beat­en, tied up, gagged, stabbed and then burnt by the killer who then stole his two-door BT 50 van, ripped a 75-inch flat screen tele­vi­sion off the wall in the liv­ing room and stole a pair of Pra­da sneak­ers from the vic­tim’s bed­room.

Gor­ing’s body was dis­cov­ered by a neigh­bour who saw smoke com­ing from his home lo­cat­ed at Ban­croft Trace, Are­na Road, Freeport just af­ter 10 am yes­ter­day and went to in­ves­ti­gate. The neigh­bour thought Gor­ing was not at home as his van was miss­ing and at­tempt­ed to en­ter the burn­ing struc­ture to put out the fire. It was then that he stum­bled up­on the vic­tim’s re­mains which had been doused with pitch-oil and set on fire on a mat in a cor­ner of the liv­ing room.

Oth­er neigh­bours were alert­ed and they rushed to the house to as­sist. They were able to con­tain the blaze and keep it from spread­ing.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the mur­der scene yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives were re­triev­ing Gor­ing’s valu­ables from the house and a se­cu­ri­ty crew from the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (TTEC) was do­ing a walk-through of the prop­er­ty to en­sure the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply had been safe­ly dis­con­nect­ed.

A fe­male rel­a­tive, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said Gor­ing pre­vi­ous­ly lived in St Joseph but want­ed a sim­ple, stress-free life, so he bought a par­cel of land at Are­na Road two years ago and be­gan gar­den­ing. She said Gor­ing worked hard to en­sure his fam­i­ly was com­fort­able.

Rel­a­tives claimed Gor­ing got in­to an ar­gu­ment with a man a few days ago and had or­dered him to leave his house. They won­dered if this had any­thing to do with the killing.

Sev­er­al neigh­bours said they could not un­der­stand who would want to kill Gor­ing.

“The lit­tle while we know him, he was a cool fel­la, nev­er had any bac­c­a­hanal with any­body,” one of them said.

An­oth­er man said: “The man was a good fel­la. He was a re­al nice sol­dier and a nice per­son to we. We nev­er had an ar­gu­ment or quar­rel since he liv­ing here. We al­ways close and look­ing out for each oth­er.”