Trinidad teacher found murdered in Cumuto

(Trinidad Guardian) A 53-year-old pri­ma­ry school teacher was found mur­dered in Cu­mu­to. 

At around 11 pm on Mon­day, res­i­dents of Bram­ble Trace, Cu­mu­to, re­port­ed hear­ing gun­shots. Sev­er­al hours lat­er, po­lice found a man’s body on top of a tyre in a forest­ed area at the side of the road. 

The vic­tim, who was lat­er iden­ti­fied as Garfield Gay, of Ari­ma, ap­peared to have gun­shot wounds and was pro­nounced dead by a dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer (DMO). 

Based on the cir­cum­stances, de­tec­tives be­lieve Gay was ab­duct­ed from an­oth­er lo­ca­tion and tak­en to Cu­mu­to to be ex­e­cut­ed. A mo­tive for the mur­der had not been es­tab­lished up to late yes­ter­day. 

An au­top­sy will be per­formed on Gay’s body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, this morn­ing. 

Scores of Gay’s past stu­dents from the St Mary’s An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School in Tacarigua ex­pressed shock and con­do­lences on Alert TT’s Face­book page af­ter re­ports of his mur­der be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing yes­ter­day. 

“This is so sad. He was one of the best teach­ers I ever met. RIP Mr Gay. Con­do­lences to all who are af­fect­ed by this un­nec­es­sary act,” An­gel Do­hCare Se­le­na wrote. 

“Can’t be­lieve this. My daugh­ter is in­con­solable right now. She just grad­u­at­ed from his Stan­dard Five class. A very good teacher and per­son. A man who made a dif­fer­ence in every stu­dent life who passed through his class,” Kay Sent­fromHeav­en said. 

“My con­do­lences to the Gay fam­i­ly. Af­ter re­cent­ly los­ing their par­ents, now a sib­ling. Rest in Peace,” Shelly-Ann Whar­wood said. 

In an­oth­er in­ci­dent, two cousins were in­jured in a shoot­ing in Care­nage on Mon­day night. 

Po­lice said at around 5 pm, a 30-year-old man and his 18-year-old cousin were dri­ving south along L’Anse Mi­tan Road when res­i­dents heard a se­ries of gun­shots. The old­er cou-sin, who was dri­ving, was shot in his arm, while the teenag­er was shot twice in his head. 

The old­er cousin drove to the St James Med­ical Com­plex. He was treat­ed and dis­charged, while his cousin was trans­ferred to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and re­mained ward­ed in crit­i­cal con­di­tion up to late yes­ter­day.