As pub­lic opin­ion con­tin­ues to swirl over the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a Ch­agua­nas woman could face crim­i­nal charges for al­leged­ly killing an in­trud­er as she de­fend­ed her fam­i­ly and prop­er­ty, po­lice of­fi­cers have said it will ul­ti­mate­ly be up to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to make that call.

In ad­dress­ing the mat­ter dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, ACP Kent Ghisyawan (Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion) said, “Each cir­cum­stance must be treat­ed on its own mer­it.”

Re­gard­ing the in­ci­dent, which oc­curred around 8.15 pm on Ju­ly 29 at Egypt Vil­lage, En­deav­our, Ghisyawan said, “In this par­tic­u­lar in­stance, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched, state­ments have been record­ed, CCTV footage has been re­cov­ered, and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing.”

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the 45-year-old woman was at home with her daugh­ter when it was al­leged that one of a cou­ple sus­pects who was on her prop­er­ty opened the door to her sil­ver Hon­da CRV, which had been parked in her fenced yard and sound­ed the horn sev­er­al times be­fore walk­ing to the front door and shak­ing it as he at­tempt­ed to gain en­try to the house.

The woman then re­port­ed­ly re­trieved a male rel­a­tive’s li­cenced firearm and fired a sin­gle shot in the sus­pect’s di­rec­tion, hit­ting him in the head.

When the sus­pect col­lapsed on the floor of the garage, the woman con­tact­ed the po­lice. It was re­port­ed that the oth­er sus­pects fled the scene af­ter see­ing their co­hort be­ing shot.

The in­ci­dent has been fu­elling much pub­lic de­bate, es­pe­cial­ly in light of an in­crease in home in­va­sions in re­cent months. It gained fur­ther trac­tion ear­li­er this week when Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar again promised her par­ty would im­ple­ment stand your ground laws to help cit­i­zens pro­tect them­selves against home in­va­sions should the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress re­turn to pow­er.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which is be­ing spear­head­ed by the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, will at some point in­clude an au­di­ence with the DPP.

This was con­firmed by Ghisyawan, who said, “The po­lice will seek an au­di­ence with the DPP, as we know the DPP is the on­ly per­son who can in­sti­tute crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings or dis­con­tin­ue said pro­ceed­ings.

“So based on the cir­cum­stances and based on the ev­i­dence which will be elicit­ed dur­ing said in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the of­fi­cers will en­gage the at­ten­tion of the DPP.”

When pressed to re­call pre­vi­ous in­ci­dents of a sim­i­lar na­ture, he re­spond­ed, “Each sit­u­a­tion would de­pend on the mer­it of the par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion, so I can’t tell you about a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion or the out­come at this point in time.”