Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

As the fam­i­ly of slain fire of­fi­cer Bruce Leza­ma con­tin­ue to cope with his death, calls are be­ing made for par­ents to take a more proac­tive role in the up­bring­ing of their chil­dren as part of crime-fight­ing ef­forts.

Leza­ma, 47, was last seen alive on Christ­mas Day, but did not re­port for work on De­cem­ber 27, which stirred con­cern from rel­a­tives.

His body was found in a precipice off Blan­chisseuse Road, Ari­ma, on De­cem­ber 30.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, a post-mortem con­clud­ed that Leza­ma was beat­en and stran­gled to death.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day at a memo­r­i­al ser­vice at the Ari­ma Ten­nis Club on Rail­way Road, Ari­ma, Leza­ma’s old­er broth­er Per­ry Ben­gochea said while he and his fam­i­ly were deal­ing with the grief of the loss as best as they could, all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing par­ents, had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to do their part in ad­dress­ing crime.

Re­fer­ring to in­stances where chil­dren have been seen loi­ter­ing out­side at night, Ben­gochea said par­ents should take a firm stance against way­ward­ness in their chil­dren.

“You look around and see young peo­ple around at all hours of the night. That’s an is­sue be­cause if you have your teenagers out­side at mid­night, who do you think they will have at mid­night?

“On­ly peo­ple who work­ing late or peo­ple who in crime, and when you have your young chil­dren out, these are the peo­ple they will be com­mu­ni­cat­ing with and be­friend.

“Par­ents have a lot to do with it, and politi­cians have a lot to do with it too, but when you look at the politi­cians in Trinidad, they seem to spend more time at­tack­ing each oth­er than try­ing to make the coun­try a bet­ter place for peo­ple to be safe.”

Ben­gochea said Leza­ma was a mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice for the past 17 years, where he worked as an Emer­gency Med­ical Tech­ni­cian (EMT) with the am­bu­lance.

He said his broth­er had a strong work eth­ic and of­ten vol­un­teered for du­ty even when he was as­signed.

“He re­al­ly ab­sorbed him­self in his work. He had a se­ri­ous pas­sion for what he did, even vol­un­teer­ing for po­lice sports, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, this hap­pened to him.”

The memo­r­i­al was at­tend­ed by Leza­ma’s friends, rel­a­tives and col­leagues in the T&T Fire Ser­vice as a trib­ute to his life and mem­o­ry be­fore his fu­ner­al on Thurs­day.

Ben­gochea al­so thanked the po­lice for their sup­port ex­tend­ed to their fam­i­ly af­ter Leza­ma’s body was found. He added that he was pleased with the ar­rest of two sus­pects in re­la­tion to the mur­der.

Po­lice said both sus­pects re­mained in po­lice cus­tody up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon as in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau were ex­pect­ed to ap­proach the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) for ad­vice on whether any charges would be laid against the men lat­er this week.