The moth­er of a woman who was shot dead by po­lice in San­ta Cruz be­lieves her daugh­ter’s death may be linked to a car which she bought four days be­fore the in­ci­dent.

Ker­ri Ser­ries, 29, and the oth­er vic­tim, Rochy­on King Ashter­man, 19, were killed by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) while at La Canoa Road in San­ta Cruz at about 9.25 pm. They were both in Ser­ries’ white Hon­da City. A pa­tron of a bar was al­so in­jured and re­mains ward­ed at hos­pi­tal.

Po­lice said on Sat­ur­day the SORT team at­tempt­ed to stop a ve­hi­cle with two oc­cu­pants on Fri­day and were shot at by oc­cu­pants of the car.

“One of the of­fi­cers was shot in the leg.

“In keep­ing with the use of force pol­i­cy, po­lice re­turned fire wound­ing the two oc­cu­pants,” the re­port stat­ed.

A pho­to­graph of an un­marked po­lice SUV with what ap­peared to be bul­let mark­ings on the front bon­net was re­leased by the TTPS as ev­i­dence of a fire-fight.

How­ev­er, Ser­ries’ moth­er, who was at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC) on Mon­day claimed some peo­ple wit­nessed the in­ci­dent.

She said her daugh­ter was a busi­ness­woman sell­ing ba­by items and toys and used Face­book to mar­ket her busi­ness and take or­ders for de­liv­ery.

The moth­er, who is said to be in a state of shock said that her daugh­ter was a moth­er of three chil­dren and had asked her for mon­ey to pur­chase a ve­hi­cle and she had giv­en her $40,000 to­wards it.

She said she saw the ve­hi­cle for sale on Face­book on a page sell­ing items and de­cid­ed to meet with the sell­er to pur­chase it.

“That car, I think the root of the prob­lem is that car. When my daugh­ter got the car on Tues­day she parked it home in Diego Mar­tin and that same day at 5.30 pm she went to Ch­aguara­mas with one of her friends for a test dri­ve be­cause she can’t dri­ve too well. Thurs­day she gone back Ch­aguara­mas with a neigh­bour. Fri­day she went on er­rands and the car re­main in Diego Mar­tin in a fam­i­ly house. Then about 7 pm Fri­day was the first time that car leave the west. But I think the po­lice was mark­ing that ve­hi­cle and didn’t know the car was sold,” she sur­mised.

The moth­er said she had no clue why her daugh­ter was in San­ta Cruz that night.

Ashter­man’s girl­friend and moth­er, who were al­so at the FSC said he loved to help peo­ple. Ashter­man was the son of Guardian Me­dia ra­dio DJ Rod­ney “Fire­ball” King.

“My son not in no gun thing. He is a graph­ic artist al­ways on busi­ness. He may be lim­ing at the wrong place at the wrong time. Last time I spoke to my son was Thurs­day he made a graph­ic for my busi­ness place. Why all yuh smear­ing his name? Why be­cause he liv­ing Bel­mont? Come on. They were lim­ing by his friends. I don’t know how she met him up or what. He was dri­ving cause she now get the car and she don’t dri­ve at night. Even af­ter the shoot­ing, all his friends was like they don’t know her.

They don’t know this per­son. It was a chance en­counter,” she added.

Ser­ries’ moth­er said some­time on Sun­day evening she got a strange call warn­ing her to stay away from FSC as Ashter­man’s rel­a­tives want­ed her dead but af­ter meet­ing with them at the FSC she re­alised that it may have been an at­tempt to keep the two fam­i­lies apart and cause mal­ice.

“Maybe they did not want us to talk and unite to fight against this.”

Ashter­man’s rel­a­tives even ex­pressed shock.

“We don’t know why who­ev­er called her but we are good with her…just like her, we want jus­tice for our child and we want to clear their names.”

An­oth­er rel­a­tive said that they don’t have a prob­lem with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith and his spe­cial elite team do­ing their job, “But you see this case. They are very wrong in this case.”

Of­fi­cers’ ac­tion jus­ti­fied, says top CoP

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Gary Grif­fith on Sat­ur­day came out in de­fence of his of­fi­cers say­ing the of­fi­cers act­ed in self-de­fence.

In a re­lease is­sued in re­sponse to the San­ta Cruz in­ci­dent on Fri­day, Grif­fith re­leased a pho­to of po­lice ve­hi­cles pock-marked with bul­let holes.

“These are the “imag­i­nary bul­lets” that hit the po­lice ve­hi­cle that was shot at in the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in San­ta Cruz...it is amaz­ing that res­i­dents al­ways have bion­ic eyes, when the po­lice are de­fend­ing their lives against im­mi­nent threats, but of the 340 plus per­sons killed this year, for some in that same area, with the same bion­ic eyes, they con­ve­nient­ly wear blink­ers and see noth­ing nor do they seem to be con­cerned, be­cause you nev­er hear their voic­es when gang mem­bers kill in­no­cent per­sons.”

He said he be­lieves that these per­sons need to find a new sto­ry to tell.

“A po­lice of­fi­cer got shot and the pa­thet­ic ex­cus­es by these con­ve­nient sym­pa­this­ers, in ar­eas where po­lice are fired up­on and re­spond by re­turn­ing fire to de­fend them­selves, are bor­ing now,” Grif­fith said.

“What would they claim? Did the of­fi­cer shoot him­self to find an ex­cuse to fire back? No! The of­fi­cer was shot at. They tried to kill him.

“For those who re­fer to the vic­tims as “in­no­cent” peo­ple, this says a lot about these sym­pa­this­ers’ char­ac­ter,” he added.

The Com­mis­sion­er said that if any­one aimed a weapon or shot at his of­fi­cers, they had his full sup­port and di­rec­tive to do what is re­quired to neu­tralise the threat and “they did.”

“Does the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice need to be thank­ful that crim­i­nal el­e­ments fired first, and ac­tu­al­ly in­jured an of­fi­cer and dam­age their ve­hi­cle to jus­ti­fy my of­fi­cers re­turn­ing fire? The an­swer is no, “ Grif­fith said.

Po­lice said they re­cov­ered a loaded gun from the car Ashter­man was dri­ving.