SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The rel­a­tive of mur­dered se­cu­ri­ty guard Hase­ly Au­gus­tine says while he ac­knowl­edged the dan­ger of his job, he tried his best to be pre­pared for any in­ci­dents.

Au­gus­tine, 47, was gunned down by ban­dits wear­ing po­lice tac­ti­cal wear while re­plen­ish­ing an RBC ATM at DS Plaza, Chin Chin Road, Cunu­pia, on Thurs­day morn­ing.

The ban­dits even­tu­al­ly es­caped with­out tak­ing any mon­ey.

Po­lice vis­it­ed the scene and found 14 spent 9 mm shells.

A burnt black Hyundai Ion­iq car be­lieved to have been used by the ban­dits was lat­er found at Bil­ly Ham­mond Road, Cunu­pia.

Sources said Au­gus­tine re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed his 47th birth­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, one rel­a­tive, who asked not to be named, said Au­gus­tine was pas­sion­ate about his job as a se­cu­ri­ty guard.

“He knew it was a dan­ger­ous job, but he did his best to be pre­pared for what­ev­er may hap­pen. If he was off du­ty he would show up to work if they called him out,” the rel­a­tive said.

The rel­a­tive, who did not want to di­vulge too much in­for­ma­tion about Au­gus­tine, said his mur­der was trag­ic.

Au­gus­tine’s rel­a­tives vis­it­ed the cen­tre to iden­ti­fy his body.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, a se­nior of­fi­cer sug­gest­ed that se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies as­sign more guards to con­duct cash col­lec­tion and re­trieval ac­tiv­i­ties.

The of­fi­cer said of the four guards who were as­signed to the trans­ac­tion, three were armed while the fourth was un­armed.

“It’s nec­es­sary for these com­pa­nies to have enough guards for these kind of du­ties,” the of­fi­cer said.

“A sec­ond ve­hi­cle with guards keep­ing watch over the first team could have made a dif­fer­ence in this sit­u­a­tion.”

Re­fer­ring to the fact that the ban­dits wore po­lice tac­ti­cal gear, the of­fi­cer urged guards on du­ty to be vig­i­lant and cau­tious.

He warned that le­git­i­mate po­lice of­fi­cers would not ap­proach guards on du­ty with­out pro­vid­ing prop­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and re­mind­ed guards that they were with­in their right to ask to see a po­lice of­fi­cer’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card.

He added that the sit­u­a­tion was con­cern­ing, as it demon­strat­ed a lev­el of or­gan­i­sa­tion on the part of the cul­prits.

Ad­dress­ing the death on Thurs­day, Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son de­scribed the killing as a “re-trau­ma­ti­sa­tion” for all pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty guards and the fam­i­lies of fall­en guards Jef­frey Pe­ters and Jer­ry Stu­art, who were killed in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances last Sep­tem­ber dur­ing a heist by ban­dits at Pen­ny­wise Plaza in La Ro­main.

Pe­ters again urged the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er their re­quest to re­move du­ties and tax­es on bul­let-proof vests and for the Bu­reau of Stan­dards to es­tab­lish stan­dards for the im­por­ta­tion of vests. He al­so ap­pealed to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to man­date that all se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies to con­duct cash-in-tran­sit ac­tiv­i­ties in ar­moured or re­in­forced ve­hi­cles.

As of yes­ter­day morn­ing, no one has been ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to Au­gus­tine’s mur­der.

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion III are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.