Hours af­ter the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings of Rochy­on King Ashter­man and his girl­friend Kris­t­ian Ker­ri Ser­ries in San­ta Cruz, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) launched a probe in­to the mat­ter.

The moth­er of a woman who was shot dead by po­lice in San­ta Cruz be­lieves her daugh­ter’s death may be linked to a car which she bought four days be­fore the in­ci­dent.

This is ac­cord­ing to gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the com­pa­ny’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Mike Wi­ley is re­cov­er­ing from ma­jor surgery and has been ad­vised by his doc­tors not to trav­el to T&T un­til his treat­ment is com­plete.

The jobs of 120 ca­su­al and tem­po­rary work­ers at the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion jobs were saved on Mon­day af­ter mon­ey was sourced from an­oth­er ac­count to pay them in a last-ditch ef­fort.

A 28-year-old Cus­toms of­fi­cer is in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the hos­pi­tal af­ter she sus­tained burns to her body in a house fire that she al­leged­ly start­ed on Sun­day.

While homi­cide de­tec­tives hope that a three-year-old girl may be able to shed some light on the mur­ders of her par­ents, Shelly-Ann Ra­goo­nanan and Wazir Mo­hammed, Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Hanif Ben­jamin says that man­ag­ing her trau­ma is crit­i­cal to her men­tal de­vel­op­ment.
The tod­dler and her eight-month-old broth­er re­mained at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day. They suf­fered mal­nu­tri­tion, hav­ing been trapped in their Clarke Road, Pe­nal home for three days among the rot­ting corpses of Ra­goo­nanan, 43, Mo­hammed, 57 and their men­tal­ly ill un­cle Naz­im Mo­hammed, 52. A re­port stat­ed that since Au­gust 11, the cou­ple’s el­dest son Vishard, who lived along the Pe­nal Rock Road, had been try­ing to con­tact them. But when all calls failed, he and a friend went to his par­ent’s home on Au­gust 14 where he met a locked gate. Vishard climbed over the gate and found that a door to the house was bro­ken. Near the door, he found his fa­ther ly­ing dead. His fa­ther had been shot and his throat slit. In­side were the bod­ies of his moth­er and un­cle. His sib­lings re­mained un­hurt in­side and were im­me­di­ate­ly tak­en to the Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty. So far, no mo­tive has been de­ter­mined for the killing and the on­ly wit­ness­es were the chil­dren. In­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Re­gion Three said this was a chal­lenge and a so­cial work­er may be need­ed to de­ter­mine whether the child can help.
But speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Monday, Ben­jamin, who is a clin­i­cal trau­ma­tol­o­gist with The Cen­tre for Hu­man De­vel­op­ment, said that trau­ma in­ter­ven­tion is need­ed to en­sure the chil­dren get back to a life of nor­mal­cy. He said that the so­cial en­vi­ron­ment that sur­rounds the chil­dren needs to fos­ter prop­er sup­port. At their age, he said their men­tal re­cov­ery is pos­si­ble as they are “still in a mag­i­cal think­ing phase and do not un­der­stand death.” To them, they might think that mom­my and dad­dy are asleep. “In all of my work, I have nev­er come across some­thing as trag­ic as what was un­veiled over the last cou­ple of days where these chil­dren would have been liv­ing among the dead, lit­er­al­ly. Of course, if you un­der­stand ba­sic bi­ol­o­gy, you will un­der­stand the pro­gres­sion of a dead body and the im­age of chil­dren liv­ing in such a sit­u­a­tion, con­fused, is even more wor­ry­ing. To­day, what we have are chil­dren who are se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised or who can be­come se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised be­cause they would have ex­pe­ri­enced a trau­mat­ic in­ci­dent.
“Com­ing out of that in­ci­dent, we have to be very care­ful with how we treat with them to en­sure that their life tra­jec­to­ry can be put back on track. Right now, those chil­dren are in­deed trau­ma­tised and re­quire a high lev­el of trau­ma in­ter­ven­tion to en­sure that we can get them back to a place,” Ben­jamin said.

When ra­dio an­nounc­er Bur­ton Justin Dookhi signed off from his 6 am to 9 am shift on Talk City 91.1fm on Sun­day, his mind was on a cel­e­bra­tion.

PNM sen­a­tor Fos­ter Cum­mings on Mon­day re­fut­ed in­sin­u­a­tions by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that there are ques­tions con­cern­ing con­tracts he ob­tained from state or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Aus­tralian ship­builders, Austal has an­nounced it has of­fi­cial­ly signed a US$85 mil­lion con­tract with Trinidad and To­ba­go to con­struct two Cape Class pa­trol boats (CCPB).

The In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) both in­tend to con­duct fresh tests on three beach­es along Ch­aguara­mas, to de­ter­mine how much of a health risk they pose to bathers.

A pris­on­er’s dash for free­dom from a med­ical in­sti­tu­tion on Sun­day night was short-lived af­ter he was held and is now back in cus­tody.

The Coast Guard is be­ing threat­ened with le­gal ac­tion con­cern­ing the de­ten­tion of eight Venezue­lan crew mem­bers who were aboard two car­go ves­sels which sunk in the Gulf of Paria af­ter be­ing in­ter­cept­ed.