Trinidad: Funeral service for Sandman, wife in Gov’t school?

By Staff Editor On In Trinidad & Tobago News |
Sandman Flyer
Sandman Flyer

(Trinidad Guardian) Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia said he would “have to con­sid­er the rec­om­men­da­tions” to de­ter­mine whether or not the fu­ner­al ser­vice for re­put­ed gang­ster Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres can be held at the Las Cuevas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, on Fri­day.

On Tues­day a dig­i­tal fly­er be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia an­nounc­ing the fu­ner­al ser­vice for Mieres and his wife, Ali­ka “Let­ty” De­here.

 
The cou­ple was among four killed in the wee hours of Ju­ly 25, when gun­men stormed their Las Cuevas home in what has been de­scribed by po­lice as a well-or­ches­trat­ed hit.

Ac­cord­ing to the fly­er, the ser­vice for the cou­ple is sched­uled to take place at 2 pm and mourn­ers are to be seat­ed by 1.15 pm.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said he was un­aware of the fly­er with the arrange­ments for the ser­vice, but he of­fered no ad­di­tion­al com­ment.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, Gar­cia said no ap­pli­ca­tion was made to use the school for the ser­vice.

He ex­plained that there was a pro­ce­dure which has to be fol­lowed if the school is to be used. That process, the min­is­ter said, in­volved an ap­pli­ca­tion be­ing made to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, which has to be ap­proved af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with him, the min­is­ter.

Gar­cia said so far he had not seen any ap­pli­ca­tion but added that he would con­sid­er it if it did come be­fore him.

There was no word on who au­tho­rised the school’s name to be used on the fly­er. Mieres was among those ar­rest­ed dur­ing the 2011 State of Emer­gency and charged with be­ing a gang leader. He was lat­er re­leased.

In 2017, Mieres was ar­rest­ed and charged with con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der, against Sel­wyn ‘Robo­cop’ Alex­is.

Mieres, 46, was ar­rest­ed then af­ter po­lice ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at his home look­ing for drugs. At the time of his death, Mieres was free on $450,000 bail.