An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

“Too many par­ents are bury­ing their chil­dren now, when it is sup­posed to be the oth­er way around,” said griev­ing fa­ther Ter­rence So­gren yes­ter­day.

On Sat­ur­day night, So­gren’s on­ly son Ja­mal was shot dead.

Yes­ter­day, So­gren ex­pressed a fer­vent wish that “All this crime would just stop.”

Ja­mal, 26, was gunned down at Blue Basin, Diego Mar­tin, as he was walk­ing to his grand­moth­er’s house.

The 26-year-old was a grounds­man at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my, St James. He was shot mul­ti­ple times and died at the scene.
Foren­sic ev­i­dence col­lect­ed at the scene in­clud­ed 15 spent 9 mm shell cas­ings and four 40-cal­i­bre shell cas­ings.

Speak­ing out­side the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, rel­a­tives, who ac­com­pa­nied Ja­mal’s fa­ther to iden­ti­fy him, de­scribed him as some­one who was al­ways more to him­self. They said they nev­er thought he would be mur­dered, as he nev­er re­ceived death threats or was fright­ened of the area in which he had lived all his life.

Rel­a­tives said the crime sit­u­a­tion was out of con­trol.
They ap­pealed to both the au­thor­i­ties and the wider cit­i­zen­ry to speak up against crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

So­gren said Ja­mal’s sib­lings were not cop­ing well at all, and his son’s mur­der had de­railed his 60th birth­day cel­e­bra­tions that were be­ing planned ahead of Au­gust 1.
So­gren re­called laugh­ing and jok­ing with his son, urg­ing him to get a nice suit for the event and Ja­mal promis­ing not to dis­ap­point.