(Trinidad Guardian) Relatives of safety technician Matthew Scipio believe that the gunman who took his life mistook him for someone else.
Scipio, 39, was shot in the back of his home at Pond Street, La Romaine, around 8.30 pm on Tuesday while on the phone with his estranged wife.
His stepfather Emmanuel Jones, 65, recalled that Scipio went outside to the back of the house near a shed to get a wifi connection on his phone from the neighbour’s internet.
“He was speaking to his wife on the phone when the thing happened. She was the last person he was talking to,” said Jones.
The stepfather said he heard three gunshots. “I was right in the gallery.Matthew passed with speed, ran out here, and pulled that (front) gate. He say,’Hospital. Carry me to the hospital.’ He open the back door and sit down. I jumped in the car. He say “I get shoot boy.’ I asked him who shoot you, who did it. But he didn’t say anything,” Jones said.
He recalled how he tried to keep Scipio conscious while on the way to the hospital.
Jones said, “I drove and told him ‘don’t worry we will reach by the hospital just now.’ When we reached by Gulf City by the lights, I heard the last loud groan. We reached by the hospital and told them somebody got shot and they in the car. I shook him. I raised his hand and it fall down,” he said.
While they were attending to his stepson, Jones said he went to the nearby police station to report the incident.
The father of one moved back to La Romaine a few years ago after he separated from his wife.
Baffled about why someone would want to kill his stepson, Jones lamented, “He don’t interfere with nobody. He always by himself. He leaves home at 5 am, goes to work, go by the shop and come back home. He does be on his phone. The most he does do is to go by the neighbour to play cards.”
He could not say if anyone witnessed the shooting, but no one has come forward. Jones dismissed robbery as the motive. “The phone was in his hand. He didn’t have anything on him.”
Investigators from the Homicide Bureau of Investigations Region 3 are continuing inquiries.