Derek Achong

Six men in­clud­ing two Venezue­lan na­tion­als have been re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody af­ter ap­pear­ing in court for mur­der­ing a Chi­nese busi­ness­man dur­ing a botched rob­bery, late last month. 

Ma­lik Jack, 21, of Mor­vant; Lin­ton Williams, 24, of Laven­tille; Ken­neth Dabreo, 27, of Bel­mont; Em­manuel Phillip, 28, of Mor­vant; and Venezue­lan na­tion­als Hud­son “Hugo” Phillip and Os­wal­do Mara­no, who re­side in Mor­vant and Laven­tille, made their vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore Mag­is­trate In­dar Ja­groo, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

The group was charged with mur­der­ing Zian­gong Phang on Au­gust 23. 

Malik Jack

TTPS

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the group is al­leged to have bro­ken in­to Hap­pi­ness Su­per­mar­ket, lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of the East­ern Main Road and Sixth Av­enue in Barataria, and at­tacked Phang and six of his rel­a­tives, who live up­stairs the busi­ness.

“The in­trud­ers were armed with knives and cut­lass­es. Dur­ing the in­va­sion, sev­er­al per­sons were chopped and wound­ed,” a re­lease from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice on the group’s court ap­pear­ance stat­ed. 

Phang and the oth­er in­jured per­sons, in­clud­ing some of the ac­cused men, were tak­en to Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope. 

LINDON WILLIAMS

TTPS

Phang died while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment, while the oth­ers with less life-threat­en­ing in­juries were treat­ed and dis­charged. 

Some of the ac­cused men were seen wear­ing ban­dages and casts on their hands and arms dur­ing the vir­tu­al hear­ing, which fa­cil­i­tat­ed their si­mul­ta­ne­ous court ap­pear­ances while they were be­ing de­tained at dif­fer­ent po­lice sta­tions in north Trinidad. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that two fe­male sus­pects, who were al­leged­ly ar­rest­ed near to the scene, were re­leased af­ter their lawyer Alex­ia Romero sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith over their pro­tract­ed de­ten­tion with­out be­ing charged. 

Kenneth Dabreo

TTPS

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­ney Kirk Hogan, who is rep­re­sent­ing Williams re­quest­ed that pros­e­cu­tors dis­close the ev­i­dence against his client in­clud­ing any CCTV footage of the in­ci­dent.

The re­quest could not be im­me­di­ate­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed as po­lice pros­e­cu­tors ex­plained that the com­plainant, who charged the group, could not join the video con­fer­enc­ing link due to tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties. 

The group is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on Sep­tem­ber 29. 

Emmanuel Phillip

TTPS

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was led by Se­nior Supt Joseph Chan­dool. ASP Dou­glas, In­sp Ma­haraj, and WPC Mo­hammed of the Re­gion Two Homi­cide Bu­reau. 

HUDSON ‘HUGO’ PHILLIP

TTPS