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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Daughter salutes hero businessman dad

I want justice

by

Casandra Thompson-Forbes
2319 days ago
20190314
A photo of Essie Parks-Ewing and her father Donald Parks is happier times. Parks was killed during a home invasion earlier this week

A photo of Essie Parks-Ewing and her father Donald Parks is happier times. Parks was killed during a home invasion earlier this week

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The daugh­ter of slain To­ba­go busi­ness­man and re­tired po­lice sergeant Don­ald Parks has bro­ken her si­lence mere days af­ter the in­ci­dent, call­ing for swift jus­tice in his case.

In an emo­tion­al ac­count of the in­ci­dent in a Face­book post, Essie Park-Ew­ing, who was at home at the time of the at­tack on her fa­ther, said she be­lieved he tried to pro­tect his fam­i­ly dur­ing the as­sault.

“I be­lieve with all my heart now af­ter watch­ing the footage, you re­mained out­side and didn’t raise an alarm to pro­tect me and my chil­dren! You knew I would have rushed out­side and I would have been hurt! We had so many plans to­geth­er, we spoke every day, all day! How can the God I serve and the God you serve al­low a lit­tle black boy to cut you down in such a man­ner?”

Parks-Ew­ing worked close­ly with her fa­ther to op­er­ate their fam­i­ly busi­ness, En­deav­our’s Chil­dren and Ma­ter­ni­ty Store, lo­cat­ed at Car­ring­ton Street, Scar­bor­ough.

Call­ing for jus­tice, she said her fa­ther was a hard work­er who be­lieved that To­ba­go de­served bet­ter. She al­so urged any­one with in­for­ma­tion to come for­ward

“How can I be ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue a lega­cy you groomed me for from day one?” she said.

“You, we be­lieved To­ba­go de­served a bet­ter of­fer­ing for chil­dren on the is­land and we worked tremen­dous­ly hard to build our brand and we did it to­geth­er. You in­sist­ed I was ready and that this was your last year to work. We were to trav­el on Sun­day, again do­ing our thing and do­ing it to­geth­er!”

She added: “To that lit­tle black boy, to your moth­er, to your girl­friend! Speak up! May your con­science pro­voke you non-stop! To that lit­tle black boy, you spilled the blood of a loved man, a man who cared for his fam­i­ly, a man who shared what he had with every and any­one.

I need jus­tice!”

Around 5.38 pm on Tues­day, Parks was ac­cost­ed and shot by two masked men armed with guns at his Sum­mer Hill Trace home. The men es­caped on foot through some bush­es at the west­ern side of the house with a knap­sack al­leged­ly con­tain­ing an undis­closed sum of US and TT cur­ren­cy.

His daugh­ter told po­lice she heard loud ex­plo­sions and on check­ing found her fa­ther ly­ing in a pool of blood. The in­ci­dent was al­leged­ly caught on CCTV cam­eras.

The mur­der of Parks came as shock to many To­bag­o­ni­ans, who de­scribed him as an en­tre­pre­neur­ial stal­wart who con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the To­ba­go eco­nom­ic land­scape, a qui­et and hum­ble man, a good soul and an an­gel on earth who did not de­serve to die in such a man­ner.

An au­top­sy is sched­uled to be con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine the ex­act cause of death.

Up to yes­ter­day, a Gold­en Lane man in his twen­ties was said to be in po­lice cus­tody and as­sist­ing of­fi­cers with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

To­ba­go To­day was re­li­ably in­formed that the man, along with his at­tor­ney, vis­it­ed the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion on Wednes­day af­ter they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that he was a per­son of in­ter­est in the mat­ter.

To­ba­go Homi­cide Bu­reau is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.


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