Trinidad Education Minister bounces  `Sandman’ funeral from school

(Trinidad Guardian) The fu­ner­al ser­vice for Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres and his wife Ali­ka “Let­ty” De­here can­not be held at the Las Cuevas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia con­firmed on Wednes­day.

On Tues­day a dig­i­tal fly­er be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia an­nounc­ing the fu­ner­al ser­vice for Mieres and his wife would be held at the school on Fri­day.

The Min­is­ter ex­plained that no fu­ner­al have ever been held in schools around the coun­try, and this ser­vice would not be the one to set a prece­dent.

“Well, I can say most def­i­nite­ly now that that the school will not be used to fa­cil­i­tate the hous­ing of the fu­ner­al ser­vices. Yes­ter­day when I got the in­for­ma­tion I did not at that time have any rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion but to­day when I checked with our Di­rec­tor of School Su­per­vi­sion, he told me that a re­quest has been made through the prin­ci­pal of the school to his line su­per­vi­sion ask­ing for per­mis­sion,” said Min­is­ter Gar­cia out­side the Par­lia­ment cham­ber en­trance on Wright­son Road yes­ter­day.

He added: “There is process we must fol­low and that process would in­volve the line su­per­vi­sor get­ting in con­tact with the Di­rec­tor of School Su­per­vi­sion and then it goes to the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer who ul­ti­mate­ly has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make that de­ci­sion,” said the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. That de­ci­sion will not al­low the fu­ner­al ser­vices to be held at the school sim­ply be­cause in all the his­to­ry of our school’s op­er­a­tions, no fu­ner­al has ever been held in any of our schools whether it is a de­nom­i­na­tion­al school or whether it is a gov­ern­ment school,” said Gar­cia.

Mieres and his wife were mur­dered last week along­side two of his body­guards Thurs­day when gun­men stormed his Las Cuevas home.

Mieres was re­put­ed to be a gang leader with con­sid­er­able in­flu­ence along the North Coast of Trinidad.

The min­is­ter could not ex­plain why the school was con­sid­ered as a lo­ca­tion for the fu­ner­al.

“I can’t re­al­ly say if the re­quest is strange or whether it is a le­git­i­mate re­quest. All I can say sim­ply is that the per­sons who are plan­ning the fu­ner­al thought in their es­ti­ma­tion would have been the prop­er venue to hold the fu­ner­al ser­vices. But again as a prop­er Min­istry, we have to en­sure that we fol­low the prop­er lines of pro­to­col and in this in­stance – the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer have both been in­struct­ed that no pro­vi­sion can be giv­en to have the fu­ner­al ser­vice held at the Las Cuevas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School,” said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, a close rel­a­tive told Guardian Me­dia that the fu­ner­al will be held at a church in the com­mu­ni­ty.

She said she had no idea where the in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the school came from, and said it was print­ed in er­ror.