Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A shoot­ing in­ci­dent last year, a land is­sue and pro­tec­tion tax are be­ing looked at as pos­si­ble mo­tives for the quadru­ple mur­ders in Ma­yaro yes­ter­day.

Gar­den­ers Bud­dy George, 59, Mar­cus Budy, 37, Je­re­mi­ah George, 20, and De­on Men­doza, 29, were shot and killed by six men dressed in po­lice op­er­a­tional wear who in­vad­ed their camp lo­cat­ed about half a mile off Basil Trace, Bris­tol Vil­lage.

The four men were shot in front of George’s two daugh­ters and one-year-old grand­son.

Ini­tial re­ports are that around 12.30 am, they were asleep in the camp when they heard shouts of “po­lice, po­lice” and saw the six sus­pects armed with firearms. They or­dered the men to lie face down on the ground and shot them be­fore es­cap­ing in a pick­up van.

The fam­i­ly lives in Cou­va but George moved in­to the camp some time ago af­ter be­ing threat­ened by peo­ple who want­ed him to pay pro­tec­tion tax.

The fam­i­ly grows co­coa and oth­er crops and rears chick­ens and ducks. They al­so own a con­struc­tion firm.

A rel­a­tive, who did not want to be named, said Budy and his two sis­ters left on Sun­day morn­ing to go to the camp. While he was not cer­tain who pulled the trig­ger and why, he said about a year ago, some­one shot at Mar­cus in Cou­va. He claimed the fam­i­ly re­port­ed the threats to the po­lice but noth­ing was done and since the shoot­ing in­ci­dent, Budy had tried not to stay in one lo­ca­tion for too long.

“He al­ways mov­ing. He al­ways feel they (will) make a tack back for him,” the rel­a­tive said.

He said Budy had ap­plied for a firearm user li­cence, but it was still pend­ing.

The rel­a­tive de­nied re­ports that the mur­ders were over a land is­sue. He said the fam­i­ly had a good re­la­tion­ship with the peo­ple in the area and George used to look out for the young peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty and as­sist­ed them with food and work.

“We hop­ing for the best.”

Not­ing that he, too, had ap­plied for a firearm user li­cence, he added, “Right now, I wish some­body as­sist me be­cause I feel­ing un­com­fort­able, see­ing what go­ing on with my fam­i­ly...”

A friend of the fam­i­ly de­scribed them as hard­work­ing, hum­ble and God-fear­ing.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray strong­ly con­demned the mur­ders, de­scrib­ing them as bar­bar­ic acts. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Paray ex­pressed pro­found shock and deep sor­row at the mur­ders which he said had left the com­mu­ni­ty dev­as­tat­ed.

“The sense­less vi­o­lence that has gripped our once peace­ful, rur­al com­mu­ni­ty is noth­ing short of ap­palling. These heinous acts not on­ly rob in­no­cent lives but al­so shat­ter the sense of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty that we hold dear,” he said.

Paray al­so ex­pressed out­rage at the fail­ure of the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence and crime and em­pha­sised the ur­gent need for com­pre­hen­sive mea­sures to com­bat this scourge.

Pledg­ing to ad­vo­cate for jus­tice and se­cu­ri­ty for every­one, Paray added, “Every part of our beloved Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing once peace­ful, rur­al com­mu­ni­ties like Ma­yaro, is now un­der the shad­ow of crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

Po­lice re­cov­ered two 9mm and six 5.56 spent shell cas­ings and a pro­jec­tile at the mur­der scene. Of­fi­cers from the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion and Homi­cide Bu­reau are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.