The son of a retired police superintendent was shot dead while lying on the ground next to his father, in a hold-up in Freeport Wednesday night.
Charandev “Charan” Singh, 24, was assisting an elderly neighbour with her security surveillance cameras, after an intruder jumped her gate, stripped himself naked and made his way to the back of her home.
Singh and his father, retired superintendent Matura Singh, their neighbour Mary Ann Edmund, 67, and one of her cousins were standing in her yard along Chickland in Freeport, talking, when two gunmen ran into the yard and announced a hold-up. The men ordered all of them to lie down on the ground.
Minutes after, the men fired several gunshots and Singh was shot three times in the chest.
He died while undergoing treatment at the Couva Hospital.
Singh was lying next to his father when he was shot. Singh’s father subsequently drew his licensed firearm and shot at the bandits, however, they managed to escape. The incident occurred at about 8.50 pm on Wednesday just across the road from where Singh lived with his parents and sister at San Francisco Land Settlement.
Speaking with the Guardian Media on Thursday, Edmund’s sister, Louisa Young described the bandits as “trigger happy.”
She said the men asked for the keys to a car in her yard from her cousin. She added that after the shooting the gunmen left without taking her cousin’s car.
Young said her sister is blaming herself for what happened to Singh. However, she is blaming the police of the Freeport Police Station for not responding to their SOS call when a known drug addict jumped their gate, stripped naked and walked to the back of their property which has two other houses and exited on the other side.
“We called the police and they said they had a patrol out in Waterloo and they couldn’t come to us...that was about 8 pm. If the police did come that time this would have never happened. That’s when Mary Ann called the boy father to come across and he and his son came over for his son to check the cameras, “ Young said.
Young said the gunmen also shot at Matura and Mary Ann but missed. One of the bullets struck a glass window and became lodged in a computer.
Lamenting the crime situation in the country she said, “Anyone can come here and stay. But we can’t go away and stay. We aways have to be looking over our shoulder. Why this have to be so? Look how this innocent child get killed...he was such a nice child.”
A team of police officers was expected to return to the scene to collect surveillance footage from the scene in a bid to assist in their investigations.