KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter is lament­ing the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion af­ter a close rel­a­tive was gunned down on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Moru­ga/Table­land Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Michelle Ben­jamin, de­scribed the death of her un­cle, Mar­vin Hamil­ton, as a sense­less act of vi­o­lence. In a Face­book post on Sat­ur­day night, Ben­jamin said Hamil­ton was her fa­ther’s younger broth­er.

“A fa­ther, a son, a friend, my un­cle, lost his life in a sense­less act of vi­o­lence... Got the call since 7 am, and even now, at 10 pm, I’m still ask­ing my­self why. Why was my un­cle mur­dered? Why does an­oth­er fam­i­ly have to en­dure this kind of pain?”

She said the Moru­ga com­mu­ni­ty was shak­en and that their hearts were heavy.

“Our fam­i­ly is bro­ken. No one de­serves to die this way. May his soul rest in eter­nal peace.”

Po­lice said Hamil­ton, 45, a labour­er from St Mary’s Vil­lage, Moru­ga, was shot dead dur­ing a sus­pect­ed rob­bery at­tempt af­ter his car broke down on the road­side in the ear­ly hours of Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the fa­ther of three was dri­ving his brown Nis­san Sun­ny B14 along Moru­ga Road when it ex­pe­ri­enced me­chan­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties. He con­tact­ed road­side as­sis­tance and sat in the car around 2 am, wait­ing for help, when sev­er­al peo­ple ap­proached the ve­hi­cle and at­tempt­ed to gain en­try. The car was locked.

Res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing a sin­gle loud ex­plo­sion at 2.46 am and con­tact­ed the po­lice. Of­fi­cers from St Mary’s Po­lice Sta­tion found Hamil­ton slumped mo­tion­less in the dri­ver’s seat with blood on his chest. The ve­hi­cle was locked from the in­side, the keys were in the ig­ni­tion, and a sin­gle gun­shot hole ap­peared in the front pas­sen­ger-side win­dow. Po­lice se­cured the scene and await­ed a dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer and the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (Re­gion Three).

As of yes­ter­day, no one had been ar­rest­ed for Hamil­ton’s mur­der, which in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve was rob­bery-mo­ti­vat­ed. Rel­a­tives said he had been re­turn­ing home from Bor­de Narve with his wife and their son when the car stalled. He told them to go ahead home, and they took a ride while he wait­ed for a wreck­er.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers de­scribed Hamil­ton as a qui­et and gen­tle man and were baf­fled by the cir­cum­stances of his death.

The post by the MP gar­nered over 900 com­ments, with posters ex­tend­ing their con­do­lences to Ben­jamin and her fam­i­ly.