Trinidad cops rule security firm owner’s death accidental

(Trinidad Guardian) In­ves­ti­ga­tors prob­ing the death Multi­na­tion­al Pro­tec­tion Spe­cial­ist Net­work own­er Richard Ed­wards have con­clud­ed it was ac­ci­den­tal due to neg­li­gence in us­ing his li­censed firearm.

How­ev­er, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse a rel­a­tive, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied de­clared that it is a “cov­er-up.”

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said the for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force mem­ber was at his se­cu­ri­ty busi­ness at Point Lisas Busi­ness Park at about 8.40 pm last Fri­day in the com­pa­ny of sev­er­al peo­ple, in­clu­sive of a po­lice of­fi­cer, when he took out his li­censed 9 mm pis­tol and be­gan demon­strat­ing some tech­niques with the firearm. Dur­ing the demon­stra­tion, Ed­wards, 51, re­loaded the pis­tol, re­moved the mag­a­zine and placed it to his head, as he ex­plained his ac­tions to the group. De­spite warn­ings from some present, he con­tin­ued his ac­tions, re­leased the trig­ger and a loud ex­plo­sion was then heard as he fell to the floor. Ed­wards was rushed to the Er­ic Williams’ Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, but was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

Po­lice have since record­ed sev­er­al state­ments from eye­wit­ness­es and so far have cor­rob­o­rat­ed this se­quence of events.

How­ev­er, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse a rel­a­tive, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied, de­clared it was a “cov­er-up. Ed­wards’ rel­a­tive said they be­lieve that some­thing was not right with the po­lice’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“He is over­ly trained. We be­lieve it’s a cov­er-up! Al­so, he was nev­er tak­en to Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, he was tak­en to Cou­va Hos­pi­tal but the truth will come out.”

Ed­wards was pre­vi­ous­ly named among sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple al­leged to have been in­volved in a wound­ing with in­tent mat­ter in­volv­ing Dil­lon John­son. How­ev­er, the TTPS said Ed­wards was nev­er in­ter­viewed by the po­lice, as in­ves­ti­ga­tors did not have suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to ques­tion him in that mat­ter.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to his death are on­go­ing.