SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

& RALPH BAN­WARIE

Po­lice had to be called to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal on Tues­day night to pro­tect 21-year-old Tay­lor Ben­son, the vic­tim of a vi­o­lent cut­lass at­tack, af­ter her at­tack­er was seen out­side the fa­cil­i­ty.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the man, who is al­so be­ing hunt­ed for the mur­der of Ben­son’s moth­er, Tri­cia Badaloo, was seen close to the fa­cil­i­ty.

Af­ter of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to the trou­ble call, some of them were sta­tioned at Ben­son’s bed­side while their col­leagues pa­trolled the area around the hos­pi­tal.

Ben­son and her moth­er were at their San­gre Grande home around 6.50 pm on Mon­day when the man, who was on bail af­ter be­ing charged for as­sault­ing Ben­son, at­tacked them.

Armed with a Chi­nese chop­per, the man hacked 55-year-old Badaloo to death as she strug­gled to pro­tect her daugh­ter.

Ben­son was able to es­cape and ran out in­to the road­way in front of the house, alert­ing neigh­bours. When po­lice re­spond­ed, Ben­son was able to name her at­tack­er be­fore los­ing con­scious­ness.

Her moth­er was found dead in­side the house. The al­leged sus­pect was seen on CCTV footage leav­ing the home with the blood­ied Chi­nese chop­per in his hand af­ter the at­tack.

Ben­son was tak­en to hos­pi­tal, where she re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion. Up un­til news time yes­ter­day, Ben­son had not been told of her moth­er’s death.

Since the at­tack, po­lice have been search­ing for the sus­pect, whose last known ad­dress was Coalmine, San­gre Grande. The man­hunt in­clud­ed in­ter­ro­gat­ing one of the man’s rel­a­tives but his where­abouts re­main un­known.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the home yes­ter­day, there was no sign of any rel­a­tives. Badaloo’s son, who lived with her, was said to have gone in­to hid­ing, fear­ing the man could al­so at­tack him.

On Tues­day, rel­a­tives told Guardian Me­dia that Badaloo was the main wit­ness in the case against the al­leged at­tack­er for the as­sault of Ben­son.

The man was re­leased on bail in March 2022 and Badaloo’s rel­a­tives be­lieve he had been plan­ning his at­tack on the moth­er and daugh­ter since then.

The rel­a­tives said while the man was re­mand­ed in cus­tody, he sent nu­mer­ous threats to Badaloo and Ben­son. Those threats were said to have been re­port­ed to po­lice.

The fam­i­ly crit­i­cised the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for fail­ing to pro­tect Badaloo and Ben­son, as they said they were not in­formed when the man was grant­ed bail.

Rel­a­tives said Ben­son shared a brief re­la­tion­ship with the man, who quick­ly be­came abu­sive.

The young woman, who has dreams of be­com­ing a pae­di­a­tri­cian, broke off the re­la­tion­ship soon af­ter it be­gan. Rel­a­tives said Ben­son fo­cused on work­ing and sav­ing to fur­ther her stud­ies. She al­so mod­els and par­tic­i­pates in com­pe­ti­tions lo­cal­ly.

Badaloo was em­ployed by Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work (CCN) as the group pro­cure­ment as­so­ciate since 2008.

IWRN wants an­swers from po­lice

Re­spond­ing to the mur­der yes­ter­day, the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) called on act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob to pub­licly state the pro­to­col for in­form­ing vic­tims of vi­o­lent crimes when their al­leged at­tack­ers are re­leased from cus­tody.

IWRN pres­i­dent Adri­ana San­drine Is­sac-Rat­tan said they were an­gry and dis­gust­ed at Badaloo’s mur­der and the at­tack on Ben­son.

“Based on in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to this in­ci­dent, the al­leged per­pe­tra­tor was re­cent­ly re­leased from prison un­know­ing to both women and their fam­i­ly mem­bers. Ac­cord­ing to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, no ex­cuse nor apol­o­gy can com­pen­sate for the loss of life, limb and se­ri­ous in­jury to these women,” Is­sac-Rat­tan said.

The net­work urged Ja­cob to state the pro­to­col to pro­tect vic­tims, es­pe­cial­ly when their at­tack­ers are known to them and “de­ter­mined to car­ry out their vi­cious at­tacks.”

“The or­gan­i­sa­tion is fur­ther re­quest­ing, that the TTPS is­sue a pub­lic state­ment im­me­di­ate­ly, on the said pro­to­cols so that the pub­lic and by ex­ten­sion, af­fect­ed vic­tims be made aware of the nec­es­sary pro­to­cols,” Is­sac-Rat­tan said.

She said the IWRN will reach out to the Badaloo fam­i­ly to of­fer as­sis­tance.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ja­cob for com­ment on the IWRN state­ment but up to press time, there was no re­sponse to calls or mes­sages.