(Trinidad Express) – For over a month, residents of Brasso Seco hid in their homes, shied away from the media and were even afraid to talk to the police amid fears that the man believed responsible for the disappearance and deaths of three of their fellow villagers remained on the run and presumably still in the area.
Azmon Alexander was deemed by the police as a “person of interest” following the disappearance of Irma Rampersad, 49, and her daughters, Felicia, 17, and Jennelle Gonzales, 19, and Irma’s granddaughter, one-year-old Shania Amoroso, when they went missing from their Paria Morne Bleu Road, Brasso Seco, home on October 26.
Their disappearance was reported to the police on October 26.
A family friend, Felix Martinez, 52, also went missing a short time after.
On November 8, the bodies of Irma Rampersad and Shania Amoroso were found in the depths of the Brasso Seco Forest by a combined team of police and soldiers who used K9 sniffer dogs to locate the people. The body of Martinez was found hours after.
With the discovery of the three bodies, residents of Brasso Seco became even more fearful of the man believed responsible for the killings and, according to several residents, they began implementing an unofficial curfew which saw them all in their respective homes by 8 p.m.
Then also began rumours that Alexander was seen in the area and had disguised himself as a woman in a bid to flee the forest which had been under a heavy police dragnet since investigations into the missing people began.
In the end he was not found in a dress or a wig.
He was not even clean-shaven and was actually arrested wearing 3/4 pants and a T-shirt around 10.30 am along the Lennox-Yearwood Boulevard in Malabar, Arima, in a green Mazda motor car.
He had a cutlass in his possession and was the lone passenger apart from the driver.
He offered no resistance when the police nabbed him.
In Brasso Seco yesterday, the Express was told that following the arrest the community’s road to normalcy would be a long one.