Trinidad mother loses second son to killers

(Trinidad Guardian) The moth­er of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer Ri­car­do Dixon, 22, was on Thursday lost for words as she tried to come to terms with los­ing her sec­ond son in six years to vi­o­lence.

Dixon left home at 5.20 am to pick up his first day of du­ties at Heller Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices but was shot dead mo­ments lat­er.

His moth­er, Camille Taitt, 40, was in a state of shock and dis­be­lief when she saw the body of her son, ful­ly clad in his se­cu­ri­ty uni­form, ly­ing on the road­way at Xeres Road in Carlsen Field.

Dixon was shot six times but was able to tell a passer­by what hap­pened to him min­utes be­fore he suc­cumbed to his in­juries at the scene.

Po­lice found five spent .40 cal­i­bre shells on the ground near his body. Dixon was the fa­ther of a one-year-old girl. Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Taitt said her son was very ex­cit­ed for his first day as a se­cu­ri­ty guard and was look­ing for­ward to tak­ing up du­ty.

“I woke him up at 5 am and walked him to the road and looked at him walk­ing out for a taxi. I nev­er knew what hap­pened to him un­til I saw his body on Face­book”, she said.

“I do not know what to say about this crime sit­u­a­tion. This is hard to deal with hav­ing lost my sec­ond son to mur­der. Just last month made it six years since my first son, Re­nal­do was stabbed to death in school at Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary School,” Taitt said.

Asked if her son was ever threat­ened be­fore or was in­volved in any fight or ar­gu­ment with any­one, Taitt replied: “I don’t know and would nev­er re­al­ly know.”

How­ev­er, an­oth­er close rel­a­tive claimed that Dixon’s life was threat­ened on many oc­ca­sions but did not con­tin­ue to say why.

At his home at Bhagna Trace, close neigh­bours and rel­a­tives gath­ered and de­scribed Dixon as a young man “with few words.”

“He nev­er used to talk much…some­times he would say good morn­ing or hel­lo when he is pass­ing and then oth­er times he would just go straight with­out say­ing a word,” said a neigh­bour.

Asked if he used to lime on the block or on the street reg­u­lar­ly the neigh­bour said, “He would be seen with the oth­er fel­las around help­ing them out in what­ev­er they would be do­ing…he was al­ways around. We knew him as a ba­by grow­ing up but some­times when a child grows up and choos­es their own path you can’t re­al­ly say any­thing to them.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Heller Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices but we were told all su­per­vi­sors and man­agers at the com­pa­ny were not avail­able for com­ment as they were said to be en­gaged with the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer and Dixon’s rel­a­tives about the case.

On May 26, 2013, Dixon’s old­er broth­er, Re­nal­do, who was 14 years at the time and a Form Three pupil, was stabbed three times and his wrist slit by a 16-year-old Form Five pupil of the said school. At the time of that in­ci­dent, Re­nal­do and a school­girl were sit­ting on a bench at about 10 am when the oth­er boy at­tacked him.

Dixon’s mur­der was record­ed as the 238th for the year so far.