Trinidad cop shot dead in bar

(Trinidad Guardian) The po­lice of­fi­cer slain at a Cara­po bar yesterday may have been shot dead in a case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty.

That is what his rel­a­tives be­lieve as PC Krys­ton Ramirez was not sched­uled to take up ex­tra du­ty as the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer for a roulette ma­chine at the bar.

Dozens of on­look­ers gath­ered near Classy Bar, lo­cat­ed at Cara­po Main Road, south of Ari­ma, as scores of po­lice of­fi­cers, some of them col­leagues of the mur­dered of­fi­cer, gath­ered at the crime scene.

The of­fi­cer, who re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed a decade in the TTPS, was as­signed to the Guard and Emer­gency Branch in Aranguez.

“He didn’t de­serve to dead so,” a rel­a­tive shout­ed to re­porters at the scene.

“He wasn’t even sup­posed to work to­day. They was call­ing the guy (who was sup­posed to work) but he wasn’t an­swer­ing, so they call him,” an­oth­er rel­a­tive told Guardian Me­dia.

Ramirez lived near the bar and had been em­ployed in the past to pro­tect the cash flow from the bar’s roulette ma­chine.

The moth­er of Ramirez’s four-year-old child, Sharon Bois­selle, was in­con­solable and had to be sup­port­ed by her sis­ter and oth­er rel­a­tives as they await­ed Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors to com­plete their sweep for ev­i­dence.

The road­way was tem­porar­i­ly blocked off and traf­fic piled up as of­fi­cers con­duct­ed their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

As the un­der­tak­ers’ ve­hi­cle re­moved the of­fi­cer’s body from the scene, about three hours af­ter the mur­der, rel­a­tives and neigh­bours moaned in an­guish.

Res­i­dents liv­ing near to the bar told Guardian Me­dia that be­tween 2.30 pm and 3 pm, they heard a gun­shot and went to in­ves­ti­gate. They saw a crowd gath­ered near the bar.

They said crime was not un­fa­mil­iar at the bar as, they claim, it had ex­pe­ri­enced a string of rob­beries, oc­cur­ring “al­most every oth­er week”.

Ini­tial re­ports in­di­cat­ed that Ramirez was shot dur­ing a rob­bery.

But an eye­wit­ness claimed two masked men ar­rived to the bar and one of them shot Ramirez in the back of his head through the bur­glar-proof­ing. They did not set foot in the bar and es­caped af­ter the shoot­ing. Ramirez was sit­ting on a chair and his back was fac­ing the road when he was shot.

Rel­a­tives said they were at the fam­i­ly’s home, just one street away, with Ramirez’s daugh­ter when they heard the trag­ic news.

Ramirez’s sis­ter, Krys­tal Rogers de­scribed her broth­er as a hard-work­ing per­son.

“He was a qui­et per­son, don’t lime, don’t par­ty, noth­ing.”

A three-para­graph state­ment from the TTPS on Sun­day said that po­lice were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent with Homi­cide Re­gion 2 con­duct­ing the en­quiries. It con­firmed that two masked men came to the bar and one of them fa­tal­ly shot Ramirez.

The TTPS ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Ramirez’s friends and fam­i­ly.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said he was un­able to pro­vide more in­for­ma­tion on the case.

Ramirez’s mur­der brings the coun­try’s toll up to 504.