RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The fa­ther of an al­leged home in­trud­er who was shot and killed by a prison of­fi­cer in Freeport on Thurs­day night has apol­o­gised to the of­fi­cer, say­ing he har­bours no re­sent­ment but can­not un­der­stand how his on­ly son, Javon Hamil­ton, be­came in­volved in a home in­va­sion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Vic­tor Hamil­ton broke down in tears as he re­flect­ed on the death of his son, whom he af­fec­tion­ate­ly called “Pa­pi”. He said the prison of­fi­cer is a dis­tant rel­a­tive, mak­ing the tragedy even more dif­fi­cult for the fam­i­ly to process.

Hamil­ton de­scribed his son as a hard­work­ing young man who dreamed of be­com­ing a sol­dier and was ac­tive­ly build­ing a fu­ture for him­self.

Javon had been re­port­ed miss­ing af­ter leav­ing home to vis­it his girl­friend. Days lat­er, the fam­i­ly learned he was the uniden­ti­fied man fa­tal­ly shot dur­ing an al­leged home in­va­sion in Freeport, where four armed men re­port­ed­ly held a teenage girl and her grand­moth­er at gun­point.

Speak­ing from his home on St Croix Road, Lengua, Hamil­ton said his son was not known to stay out late and gen­er­al­ly re­mained close to home ex­cept when vis­it­ing his girl­friend in Pe­tit Café, Princes Town.

When Javon failed to re­turn on Thurs­day night, Hamil­ton said he re­peat­ed­ly called him but re­ceived no re­sponse.

His con­cerns in­ten­si­fied the fol­low­ing day, prompt­ing the fam­i­ly to file a miss­ing per­sons re­port with the San Fer­nan­do CID and cir­cu­late fly­ers bear­ing Javon’s pho­to­graph.

Hamil­ton said it was through ef­forts to iden­ti­fy the uniden­ti­fied body that the fam­i­ly even­tu­al­ly learned of his son’s death.

He re­called be­ing shown a pho­to­graph of the de­ceased but ini­tial­ly failed to recog­nise him.

“I couldn’t make him out. He looked so dark. I said that is not my son,” Hamil­ton said through tears.

His wife, Vicky Daniel, lat­er con­firmed that the body was their son’s.

The rev­e­la­tion dev­as­tat­ed the fam­i­ly, Hamil­ton said, es­pe­cial­ly since he had nev­er seen signs that Javon was as­so­ci­at­ing with peo­ple who could lead him in­to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Asked whether his son had dis­played any in­di­ca­tion that he was keep­ing the wrong com­pa­ny, Hamil­ton replied: “No, he didn’t show any signs.”

He said Javon worked reg­u­lar­ly in con­struc­tion and of­ten as­sist­ed him with plumb­ing jobs.

Ac­cord­ing to Hamil­ton, his son had al­so com­plet­ed re­cruit­ment test­ing for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment and had signed up in hopes of join­ing the mil­i­tary.

“Every morn­ing he would wake up ear­ly and go to work,” he said.

Now, he is left grap­pling with unan­swered ques­tions about how his son end­ed up at the Freeport prop­er­ty and what cir­cum­stances led to his death.

Adding to the fam­i­ly’s an­guish, Hamil­ton said the prison of­fi­cer in­volved in the in­ci­dent is a dis­tant rel­a­tive.

Of­fer­ing an apol­o­gy to the of­fi­cer, Hamil­ton said he want­ed an­swers and hoped in­ves­ti­ga­tors could de­ter­mine ex­act­ly what hap­pened.

“I have no idea. I want to help the po­lice solve the case. I want to see the footage to see who he went with,” he said.

De­spite pub­lic crit­i­cism, Hamil­ton in­sist­ed his fam­i­ly was re­spectable and well re­gard­ed with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“I still love Javon. That’s my on­ly son. That’s my son. I still love him,” he said, weep­ing.

He al­so urged par­ents to re­main vig­i­lant about their chil­dren’s as­so­ciates, not­ing that young peo­ple some­times leave home af­ter re­ceiv­ing calls from friends with­out their par­ents know­ing where they are go­ing.

Mean­while, Javon’s cousin, Ayana Daniel, said the fam­i­ly was strug­gling to rec­on­cile the cir­cum­stances of his death with the per­son they knew.

Daniel said Javon had been like a younger son to her and de­scribed him as a play­ful, re­spect­ful and hard­work­ing young man.

“He was al­ways re­spectable, al­ways kind and very hard­work­ing. He had his own home, his own car, a job. Every­thing he need­ed, he had al­ready at age 18,” she said.

She not­ed that he grew up in the com­mu­ni­ty, at­tend­ed church and worked in con­struc­tion.

Daniel said she did not be­lieve Javon in­ten­tion­al­ly placed him­self in dan­ger and that the fam­i­ly con­tin­ued to search for an­swers.

Re­ly­ing on their faith to cope with the loss, she said Javon’s up­bring­ing in the church had brought com­fort to griev­ing rel­a­tives.

“Javon grew up in church. He knew who Je­sus is, and that is a good thing that’s giv­en us strength to­day,” she said.

She added that he would be deeply missed by both his fam­i­ly and the wider com­mu­ni­ty.