Trinidad cop’s killing a hit say investigators

(Trinidad Guardian) Po­lice be­lieve a hit was called on the life po­lice con­sta­ble Krys­ton Ramirez. How­ev­er, they say they are close to mak­ing ar­rests af­ter re­ceiv­ing crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence.

Ramirez’s rel­a­tives are mean­while call­ing for “jus­tice.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, one of his rel­a­tives said Ramirez was pas­sion­ate about his polic­ing ca­reer and kept pur­su­ing stud­ies.

“He did foren­sic stud­ies and oth­er in­ves­tiga­tive stud­ies just to keep im­prov­ing on him­self be­cause he want­ed to be and was striv­ing to be the best po­lice of­fi­cer in the ser­vice,” the rel­a­tive, who did not want to be named, said.

“He worked very hard for his chil­dren. One of them is five years and he worked very hard in try­ing to pro­vide them with the best and make them the best chil­dren in the world.”

Ramirez was the fa­ther of three but lost one of his daugh­ters a cou­ple years ago due to ill­ness.

Ramirez was as­signed to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Guard and Emer­gency Branch.

They de­scribed Ramirez as a “chat­ter­box.”

“I will al­ways re­mem­ber him to talk a lot but he was a very hard work­ing, ded­i­cat­ed and well-loved per­son by all.”

One of his col­leagues, who al­so wished not to be iden­ti­fied, de­scribed Ramirez as “more than am­bi­tious.”

“He was the one who al­ways had a word or two of mo­ti­va­tion and en­cour­age­ment for you. Al­ways look­ing in on life from the pos­i­tive side and al­ways be­lieved that he could have helped change this evil world and make that dif­fer­ence. He was an an­gel amongst us. Fly high my batch…Go with God and in Peace.”

Mean­while, po­lice sources be­lieve Ramirez’s mur­der may have been linked to a brawl in the bar ear­li­er Sun­day. Ramirez worked at the bar part-time.

One the­o­ry sug­gests he had to put a pa­tron out of the bar and that pa­tron sub­se­quent­ly threat­ened his life.

Not want­i­ng to dis­close much about the in­ves­ti­ga­tions and if his mur­der was a di­rec­tive from some­one be­hind the prison walls, po­lice said, “it is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed at all an­gles…and we can­not give a def­i­nite mo­tive at this time but we are get­ting good in­for­ma­tion so far but what we can say is that Ramirez was the tar­get as the gun­man came for him with no doubt.”

Mean­while, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Michael Seales again used this lat­est killing to call for of­fi­cers to be armed “on and off du­ty.”

Speak­ing on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Seales said he got in­for­ma­tion that the gun­man ap­proached Ramirez through bur­glar proofed bars.

“So ac­cord­ing to this in­for­ma­tion that I have, I am cer­tain in my mind that this was, in fact, a hit on his life. The as­so­ci­a­tion has been ad­vised that rob­bery has been ruled out and once rob­bery is ruled out we can say that it was a di­rect at­tack on an of­fi­cer,” Sealed said.

Asked if he thinks his of­fi­cers are un­der at­tack, Seales replied: “As per the mo­tive be­hind it that would give us some clar­i­ty as to whether of­fi­cers are un­der at­tack and I can say be­cause of the height­ened ac­tiv­i­ties of the mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice we can­not rule out the fact that we are al­ways con­stant­ly at­tacked and that is why we would have made rec­om­men­da­tions that of­fi­cers be armed at all times whether on or off du­ty.”

He added that some of­fi­cers are al­ready armed but be­lieves the process needs to be speed­ed up and more firearms need to be ac­quired to al­low the quick­en­ing of the arm­ing process.

Seales said he did not con­done the fact that the of­fi­cer was moon­light­ing, which was against po­lice reg­u­la­tions, but said his mur­der was now their main con­cern.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 2.30 pm on Sun­day two masked men en­tered the Classy Bar at Cara­po Main Road, Ari­ma, where Ramirez was work­ing his sec­ond job. One of the sus­pects, who was armed with a gun, point­ed it at Ramirez and fa­tal­ly shot him. Both men then es­caped.