Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Nine years ago, Wendy-Ann Hug­gins lost her 31-year-old son Joel Ap­pari­cio to a bul­let.

The bul­let was fired from a spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cer’s gun.

A part of her died that day too, as did her be­lief in the T&T jus­tice sys­tem.

De­spite con­fir­ma­tion from the Di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty David West that he sub­mit­ted a file to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on Jan­u­ary 6, 2015, for con­sid­er­a­tion of the ev­i­dence, no ar­rests have been made.

“This place is crazy man. This place is crazy. There’s no jus­tice. You see how fast it is they or­ga­nize jus­tice for the elite. You see how fast, and that I can’t un­der­stand. The wheels of jus­tice roll so slow­ly for the poor man, the man on the ground. But the elite? They do it. They find a way to do it, even if they have to open the court at night.

“I have my son’s pic­ture and I hold it in my hand, and I just rub his face. Many times, peo­ple don’t know when I’m cry­ing, you know,” Hug­gins told the Sun­day Guardian.

Through­out the ten 10-minute in­ter­view, Hug­gins of­ten broke down in tears and her voice grew faint.

She said her grief is a pain she has been forced to grow ac­cus­tomed to.

“When the pain gets un­bear­able, I just say God, there is a moth­er that is go­ing through what I’m go­ing through, help them, strength­en them to get the strength to go on. But every day I feel the pain for moth­ers be­cause good, bad or ug­ly, the pain, the pain, the pain is some­thing else. I don’t want that to hap­pen to my worst en­e­my. I feel the pain and I pray every day.

“I’m sor­ry. I didn’t mean to cry. I didn’t mean to cry. I am here hang­ing in for moth­ers and fa­thers, but es­pe­cial­ly moth­ers. They (the au­thor­i­ties) for­get me. They just for­get me. I have to keep strong. I thank you so much for call­ing,” she said.

Since Joel’s death, Wendy-Ann has not re­ceived any sub­stan­tial up­date about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to her son’s death.

On May 2, 2014, Joel was shot by a spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cer while run­ning along Re­al Street in San Juan.

Eye­wit­ness­es told po­lice that Ap­pari­cio was mak­ing his way to the San Juan Po­lice Sta­tion for as­sis­tance. Wit­ness­es al­leged that the of­fi­cer, in plain clothes and in an un­marked ve­hi­cle, drove along­side Ap­pari­cio and shot him in his chest with­out any warn­ing, while the 31-year-old was run­ning to make a re­port.

Peo­ple at the scene of the crime al­so al­leged that the of­fi­cer con­fessed, at the scene, to shoot­ing the “wrong man.”

Wendy-Ann wit­nessed the in­ci­dent.

Since that day, she has not re­ceived an up­date, through of­fi­cial means, about the in­ves­ti­ga­tions that were sup­posed to be car­ried out by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty PCA).

“I at­tend­ed a fo­rum at City Hall - the head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty and the deputy was there, and the last thing they told me was, ‘No one hasn’t been in con­tact with you yet? I said ‘no.’ He(the chair­man) said there was go­ing to be an in­quest, and that was all. That was be­fore COVID-19, and noth­ing at all since then. Noth­ing. No­body con­tact­ed me.

“It was about two morn­ings ago that I just woke up, the trau­ma is stored in­side, I told my hus­band that it ap­pears that a po­lice­man could just shoot some­body, shoot some­body and just don’t have to an­swer,” Wendy-Ann said.

She be­lieves there are “well-con­nect­ed” peo­ple, like­ly with­in the TTPS who have been cov­er­ing up the killings of in­no­cent peo­ple in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings over the years.

De­spite the agony caused by her son’s loss, Wendy-Ann has not lost faith. She still hopes that one day her son’s killer will face jus­tice.

“He has to ask God for mer­cy. I leave that to him and God. And I hope he doesn’t shoot any­body else. I will tell him don’t do it again and don’t hide be­hind who­ev­er he is hid­ing be­hind be­cause he must be hid­ing be­hind some­body.

“Some­body way up there, pro­tect­ing these peo­ple, you know. Some­body in au­thor­i­ty is pro­tect­ing these peo­ple be­cause I see oth­er things on the TV where peo­ple get shot, and some­body pro­tect­ing them,” Wendy-Ann said of the per­son re­spon­si­ble.

Joel Ap­pari­cio was a fa­ther of one. His daugh­ter was 13 years old at the time of his death.

No one has been ar­rest­ed or charged in con­nec­tion with his killing.

A re­cent­ly re­leased Trinidad and To­ba­go 2022 Hu­man Rights Re­port by the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State list­ed killings by po­lice as one of the sig­nif­i­cant hu­man rights is­sues in the coun­try. The re­port found that there were cred­i­ble re­ports that po­lice com­mit­ted ar­bi­trary or un­law­ful killings.

“De­spite gov­ern­ment steps to pun­ish se­cu­ri­ty force mem­bers and oth­er of­fi­cials charged with un­law­ful killings or oth­er abus­es, open-end­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the gen­er­al­ly slow pace of crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­ceed­ings cre­at­ed a cli­mate of im­puni­ty,” the re­port stat­ed on page three.

Among the po­lice-in­volved killings list­ed in the re­port were the killings of Po­lice Con­sta­ble Clarence Gilkes who was shot and killed by a col­league in April 2022; the Ju­ly 2022 killing of three men in Port-of-Spain dur­ing a po­lice chase; the Oc­to­ber 2022 killing of a man by an of­fi­cer dur­ing an ar­gu­ment for a park­ing spot in San Fer­nan­do; as well as the 2001 deaths of An­drea Bharatt kid­nap­ping and mur­der sus­pects Joel Bal­con and An­drew Mor­ris.