Trinidad: Husband ready to flee country, after wife and son killed

(Trinidad Guardian) Lennox Joseph, 65, sur­vived an at­tempt on his life where he was shot six times.

His daugh­ter and his wife, some months ago al­so es­caped bul­lets di­rect­ed at them by gun­men at their home in San­ta Cruz.

Joseph re­tired as a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) sev­en years ago.

How­ev­er, on Tues­day, Joseph’s wife, Mar­sha, 55, and son, Shawn, 22, did not sur­vive when gun­men walked in­to their busi­ness place at cor­ner Sad­dle Road and San­ta Cruz Old Road and opened fire on them. Both moth­er and son died at the hos­pi­tal.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, Joseph con­firmed that his wife and son were killed over an on­go­ing land dis­pute for over five years with per­sons known to them.

The area of the land, ac­cord­ing to him is 5,000 square feet which he said was pur­chased by him through a cred­it union in 2001 but on­ly in 2014 he ac­quired all nec­es­sary doc­u­ments for own­er­ship af­ter com­plet­ing the pay­ment.

Joseph said mys­te­ri­ous­ly a road was cut through his land and ever since that there were sev­er­al dis­putes. He al­so dis­closed that the mat­ter was raised be­fore five dif­fer­ent judges in the Court.

He said that he has writ­ten sev­er­al let­ters to the Prime Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice about his woes and claimed that no one pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty for him and his fam­i­ly.

Joseph said he even took his plight to YouTube where he pub­licly spoke about his con­cerns, in­jus­tice and threats.

Now, Joseph said he may be forced to pack up his busi­ness, sell out and flee this coun­try as he fears more for his own life and the lives of the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of his fam­i­ly.

An ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the T&T Guardian dat­ed March, 8, 2019, re­vealed a heat­ed le­gal dis­pute over land but showed that Joseph was spared jail af­ter he was found guilty of con­tempt of court for breach­ing a High Court or­der.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad did not send Lennox Adol­phus Joseph to jail be­cause he had re­paired a road he had dug up.

In­stead, Joseph was or­dered to pay $25,000 in costs.

Joseph said de­spite the le­gal wran­gling his wife and son did not de­serve such vi­o­lent deaths and he no longer feels safe in this coun­try.

Thus far po­lice of­fi­cers in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter be­lieve they caught the main sus­pect in con­nec­tion with the mur­ders of Mar­sha and her son Shawn, who was killed dur­ing a shoot out with law­men.