A St James man has ap­peared in court, charged with the mur­ders of three Venezue­lans.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the TTPS, Shakiyl Par­ris, 26, of Up­per Dibe Road, Long Cir­cu­lar, was charged with the of­fences when he ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Mag­is­trate Mau­reen Ba­boolal-Gafoor, in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, on Thurs­day.

The po­lice ser­vice said the mat­ter was post­poned to Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 13, 2022.

De­tail­ing in­for­ma­tion from the case, the TTPS said of­fi­cers of the West­ern Di­vi­sion re­spond­ed to re­ports of loud ex­plo­sions at Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James, around 2.15 am, on Tues­day, De­cem­ber 8, 2020 and found a house en­gulfed in flames.

Fire of­fi­cers up­on ex­tin­guish­ing the fire dis­cov­ered what ap­peared to be three charred hu­man re­mains.

Po­lice said the re­mains are be­lieved to be those of Luis San­ti­a­go Figuera, Cel­so An­drade Ce­de­no and Flor Leal Gar­cia.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions were su­per­vised by In­sp Lynch and In­sp Mon­groo, both of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (HBI), Re­gion One, with as­sis­tance from of­fi­cers at­tached to the West­ern Di­vi­sion, Cy­ber Crime Unit and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice.

The TTPS said due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions at the pris­ons, Par­ris was charged on Thurs­day fol­low­ing ad­vice re­ceived from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Roger Gas­pard SC, on Sun­day, Oc­to­ber 31, 2021.

Po­lice said Par­ris has oth­er mat­ters pend­ing be­fore the courts.