SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice from the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) are work­ing to de­ter­mine whether the at­tack against Trini­bad artiste Meschach Em­manuel, alias 'Plumpy Boss', was sanc­tioned by en­ti­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go or in Sint Maarten.

Em­manuel, 26, was shot by gun­men af­ter per­form­ing at the Moon­bar Rooftop, Rhine Road, Sint Maarten, just af­ter 4 am on Sat­ur­day (Ju­ly 27, 2024).

Em­manuel was shot in his head and re­mains in a heav­i­ly se­dat­ed, se­ri­ous con­di­tion up to Tues­day morn­ing.

Ear­li­er this month Em­manuel, a Beetham na­tive, was charged with be­ing a mem­ber of a gang.

The charges were laid af­ter of­fi­cers of the SIU and the po­lice Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit viewed mu­sic videos and re­viewed lyrics, in which he claimed al­le­giance to a gang.

Asked how Em­manuel was al­lowed to leave the coun­try to per­form de­spite be­ing charged re­cent­ly with a crime, one of­fi­cer said there were no stip­u­la­tions re­strict­ing him leav­ing the ter­ri­to­ry as he was not like­ly to es­cape.

"If you're an artiste or some­one whose liveli­hood de­pends on you trav­el­ling, they will make an ex­cep­tion,” the po­lice of­fi­cer ex­plained, “es­pe­cial­ly if you have fam­i­ly or oth­er busi­ness in­ter­ests in Trinidad that will pre­vent you from hid­ing abroad and nev­er re­turn­ing."

Sources dis­closed that Sint Maarten po­lice con­tact­ed the SIU at around mid­day on Sat­ur­day—hours af­ter Em­manuel's shoot­ing—seek­ing as­sis­tance on pos­si­ble sus­pects.

One of­fi­cer close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said as of Tues­day, the mo­tive for the shoot­ing was "clear­ly gang-re­lat­ed".  How­ev­er, it was un­clear whether the gun­men or the or­der for the shoot­ing orig­i­nat­ed from T&T or in Sint Maarten where the at­tack hap­pened.

The of­fi­cer said while Em­manuel is be­lieved to be an af­fil­i­ate of the Sev­en gang, the Sixx gang has a net­work span­ning mul­ti­ple Caribbean is­lands, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for the at­tack to be or­dered from out­side of T&T.

He said the 'Sixx' ti­tle of the gang orig­i­nat­ed from Ja­maican dance­hall artistes.

The of­fi­cer said as part of their en­quiries, po­lice are re­view­ing an Air Traf­fic In­dex to mon­i­tor whether sus­pects may have left T&T to trav­el to Sint Maarten around the time of Em­manuel's shoot­ing.

"The in­dex is a com­put­er sys­tem that al­lows us to see the full de­tails on who would have left the coun­try at a giv­en time, the flight num­ber, their des­ti­na­tion and so on,” the po­lice source said.

"From this it would be pos­si­ble to nar­row down which per­sons would have been go­ing to a cer­tain coun­try and do back­ground checks to see if these peo­ple are af­fil­i­ates of any lo­cal gangs."

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands no lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cers have been sent to Sint Maarten as part of in­ves­ti­ga­tions.  How­ev­er, sources said the TTPS and the Sint Maarten au­thor­i­ties are work­ing close­ly through phone calls and email cor­re­spon­dence.

The of­fi­cer de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as be­ing "ex­treme­ly time-sen­si­tive" as Sint Maarten au­thor­i­ties were work­ing to gath­er as much in­for­ma­tion as pos­si­ble be­fore the sus­pect or sus­pects could go in­to hid­ing.