(Trinidad Express) – The murder toll for the year has reached 100, with the killing of an Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) foreman and his wife.
Tracey Sealy was warned that her husband, Roger Baptiste, was being threatened, and she was advised by a close relative to stay away from him or she, too, would be killed when “they” come for him.
She didn’t.
In the end, they were found dead in the bedroom of their William Avenue, Morvant apartment shortly before 9 am on Thursday. Police believe, however, that they were killed some time around two o’clock that morning.
Baptiste, 40, an URP foreman, was the father of a daughter from a previous relationship.
Sealy, on the other hand, was 20 and worked as a clerk in an unnamed Port of Spain store.
Residents who spoke with the police said that some time around 2 am, they heard several gunshots.
They feared for their own lives and didn’t come out to investigate.
Later that morning when they emerged, they found the two people in their bedroom, bullet wounds all over their bodies with 9 mm shells littering the floor.
Officers from the Morvant CID, Homicide Bureau and Special Anti-Crime Unit were on the scene by the time the Express arrived.
The only relative of the couple who would speak to reporters was Baptiste’s mother, Edith Baptiste.
She sat several feet away from where her son’s body was found, calmly speaking to reporters while a relative placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“The last I saw my son was [Ash Wednesday],” she said, adding that she gave him $20.
She described him as “a hasty fella who, when he gets vex, he would leave but when he comes back, he come back with a loving heart”.
Sealy’s mother, an acting Inspector with Telecom Security, was on the scene as well but she firmly declined an interview. “I respect what you have to do but I really cannot speak right now,” she said.
Homicide Bureau officers are continuing investigations.
