(Trinidad Express) A Moruga mother is demanding an investigation into the shooting death of her son allegedly by an off-duty police officer on Saturday.
Venrick Hudlin, 54, was shot once in the chest.
Police said Hudlin was walking along Gomez Trace, near his home, when he was involved in an altercation with an officer attached to the Special Investigations Unit.
Investigators said the officer was threatened by the man “unknown to him”. He drew his service revolver and fired one shot hitting him in the chest.
The incident occurred at around 4.50pm.
Hudlin was pronounced dead at the Princes Town District Hospital.
Hudlin’s family, however, obtained closed circuit television camera footage of the incident.
His mother, Mary Walker, is now calling on Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith to intervene.
The video, which was shared with the Express, showed Hudlin walking at the side of the roadway with a cutlass in his hand.
A blue sport utility vehicle suddenly drove into his pathway causing Hudlin to jump across a drain on the roadside.
Hudlin looked into the vehicle and seconds later he was shot from someone inside the vehicle.
He collapsed inside the drain.
The driver and a front seat passenger exited the vehicle and walked over to Hudlin.
In a telephone interview with his mother on Sunday, the Express was told that the alleged shooter was identified as a man from the community.
Walker said, “I am not sure if they had an altercation before but what I am hearing is that there was some kind of argument. My son went to clean someone yard in the area and was returning home when this car pulled alongside him and he was shot. We understand that my son fell into a drain and the men came up and pick him up and placed him in the vehicle and take him to the hospital. The next thing I heard was the hospital called me and said my son was pronounced dead. They said it was an altercation involving a police and there is an investigation. I did not get to see my son yet.”
Walker admitted that her son was carrying a cutlass in his hand but she denied that he was using it as a weapon.
“He lived right there and he was cleaning people yard to earn an extra dollar. He just finished and he was going home,” she said.
Walker said the family obtained footage from three houses in the area and she was convinced that her son was wrongfully killed.
“This man killed my child. I don’t know what this child did to deserve this. He was a very jovial person, very friendly. You can ask anyone here. He was never in any fight or bacchanal with anybody,” she said.
The body was removed to the Forensic Science Centre in St James where an autopsy would be performed on Tuesday.
Walker said, “I am pleading for someone to find out the truth. We need answers. My son did not deserve to die like this.”
Hudlin was a father of one who worked as a watchman and plant attendant at the Water and Sewerage Authority.
