Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A Siparia man is de­mand­ing jus­tice af­ter his rel­a­tive, 50-year-old Zane Bowen, was shot and killed dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion with an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer on Mon­day. Ini­tial re­ports stat­ed that around 7 am, a po­lice con­sta­ble of Darsan Trace, Siparia, had just re­turned home when he was ap­proached by Bowen, who was re­port­ed­ly armed with a cut­lass and a piece of wood. An al­ter­ca­tion al­leged­ly en­sued be­tween the two men, dur­ing which the of­fi­cer re­treat­ed in­to the yard of his res­i­dence. How­ev­er, po­lice said Bowen fol­lowed him in­side and con­tin­ued the con­fronta­tion. The of­fi­cer, who is cur­rent­ly on in­jury leave and holds a Firearm User’s Li­cence (FUL), claimed he drew his Glock pis­tol and fired sev­er­al shots at Bowen, hit­ting him mul­ti­ple times about the body. Bowen died at the scene. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Bowen's rel­a­tive, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said his broth­er had an is­sue with his neigh­bours park­ing their ve­hi­cles “in the mid­dle of the road”. He said Bowen, a con­struc­tion work­er, was prepar­ing to go to work when the al­ter­ca­tion oc­curred, as in­side the house, he saw a bowl of food and his tools packed for work. Call­ing for a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion and for the po­lice of­fi­cer to be charged, he said Bowen was shot about four to sev­en times.

“If you are a trained po­lice of­fi­cer who work­ing Guard and Emer­gency, you do ex­tra train­ing. You sup­posed to know the use of a firearm. How to use a firearm. How to put down some­body with­out ex­ces­sive force, and that was ex­ces­sive force be­cause one shot could kill a man, with sev­en shots, you try­ing to make a state­ment.”

Bowen, he said, lived in the area for about 15 years and had no chil­dren. De­scrib­ing him as a hard­work­ing per­son, he said his broth­er was no trou­ble­mak­er and must have been pro­voked.

"I in a shock to know that this hap­pen. Is your neigh­bour; this should not have reached to this,” he lament­ed, adding that it should have been dealt with dif­fer­ent­ly.

“It dif­fi­cult; I have to be strong, but it dif­fi­cult,” he lament­ed.

Mean­while, po­lice re­mained tight-lipped as to whether the of­fi­cer was still in cus­tody yes­ter­day, but he did not ap­pear to be at home when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day. Po­lice had said on Mon­day that a full re­port would be com­piled for sub­mis­sion to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

Siparia po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.