-accused them of stealing money
Narad Sookoo and Tomeshwar Doobay, the Guyanese construction workers who were executed in Trinidad, may have been killed over money they were accused of stealing from a businessman they worked with, according to the Trinidad Guardian.
Just a few hours after they were taken from a construction site near their St Augustine home, the bodies of Sookoo, 28, and Doobay, 21, were found submerged in a river at an abandoned landfill in Felicity, Chaguanas on Sunday morning. The men, who had been tied up and bundled into a car, each had a single gunshot wound to the head.
According to the Guardian’s report, police have unearthed information that the two men were accused of stealing TT$800 from the home of a businessman. The report quoted the police as saying that the men had worked at the businessman’s premises, but left after he physically assaulted two other workers, whom he accused of stealing the money.
After Sookoo and Doobay left, the police said, the businessman telephoned them, asking why they left. According to investigators, the Guyanese were upset over the beating of their co-workers. The businessman also accused Sookoo and Doobay of stealing the money and threatened to kill them, police said.
Meanwhile, Doobay’s mother yesterday told Stabroek News, from her home at Lot 44 Banie Street, Reliance, Canje, that she is very disturbed about some media reports. She explained that her son was never involved in drugs or any illegal activities.
The only thing she knows for a fact, she added, is that some persons had kidnapped him, tied him up and then shot him.
The grieving woman was at a loss to find a motive for the brutal slaying of her son, while lamenting the fact that he left Guyana for Trinidad so that he could be a better person and make a better life. “If the government been a provide work fuh dem, dem wont ah go to look fuh work in Trinidad, but work nah deh here,“ the woman cried.
She insisted that no one from the other daily newspapers went to her to ask anything. “They just write wha dem want,“ she said, “It is not fair to my son.” She told Stabroek News that one newspaper said that she and her family does not even want to take responsibility for her son’s body. This, she said, is a lie, as they are currently making arrangements to bring Doobay’s body to Guyana.
Sookoo lived at Lot 59 Workshop Street, Canefield, Canje, where a woman identifying herself as his sister informed that her mother, who has since travelled to Trinidad with her husband, left specific instructions not to say anything to the media. An uncle of the young man, however, said that the parents were making arrangements to have his body cremated in Trinidad. Stabroek News understands that they were forced to take such a decision because of the advanced decomposed state of the body.
In Trinidad, Stabroek News has learnt, the police arrested a man yesterday and questioned him but he was later released.
The two men were staying with relatives in St Augustine. They were snatched around 4 pm on Saturday by three men, who bundled them into a heavily-tinted car.
Reports are that they were at their worksite when two cars pulled up and two men emerged from the cars and called across to them. “A heated discussion followed and the two men were bound by the group of men and bundled into one of the vehicles,” a report in the Trinidad Express said on Monday.
When the bodies were found on Sunday morning they were still fully clothed but their shoes were missing. The Express described the kidnapping and subsequent death of the men as “a scene that bore resemblance to that of a mafia movie.”