(Trinidad Express) A dispute over 16 acres of north coast land is believed to have led to yesterday morning’s double homicide in Blanchisseuse.
Nigel “Garbu” Dedier, 51, and Mitchell “Frist” Evangelist, 31, were ambushed and shot dead shortly after 10 a.m. as they worked on the construction site of a house off the Blanchisseuse Main Road.
The site is located opposite the Blanchisseuse recreation ground and community centre.
Police said that as the two men worked, two gunmen, whom the police suspect knew the area well, confronted and then shot Dedier and Evangelist several times about their bodies, killing them on the spot.
The men then ran across the recreation ground and into the forest.
Police had not found them up to last night.
Neighbours called one another after hearing the gunshots yesterday. They found the bodies of both men on the site shortly afterwards and called the Blanchisseuse police.
A relative of Evangelist claimed there had been a High Court matter which was settled in favour of their side of the family and that a judge ruled that those who had been occupying certain properties needed to leave by February 9.
“Since then they had been threatening me. (But) I am 72 years old and I eh ‘fraid to dead,” said Evangelist’s grandmother, Lynette. “So they could kill me if they wanted and after that they can go to America for the rest (of my relatives) because it have more and if they killed them they would get the land,” she said.
Lynette Evangelist said she did not hear any gunshots yesterday morning, but was told that something had happened.
She said she knew her grandson was on a job site nearby and suspecting that it may have been him, asked her other grandchildren to go and look for him.
“He was a real quiet boy. He did not do too much liming. He was easy-going but when his grandfather died and left 16 the acres of land there has been contention,” she said.
She recalled that on the night of February 17, 2021, Evangelist’s brother, Sherwyn Maharaj, 31, was shot and killed near their home at O’Connor Street, Blanchisseuse.
Police listed the motive behind that murder as an ongoing property dispute.
Police confirmed later yesterday this is the motive behind the double homicide.
They said they expected to make an arrest soon.
Out of control
“This crime is out of control and most times it is the innocent that pays for the guilty,” one of Dedier’s relatives told the Express.
The relative asked not to be named.
“I find this thing overbearing,” she said, complaining that in other cases of murder the victims were not always upstanding people but as far as she was concerned, Dedier was.
“You can ask the villagers. All Nigel does do is work,” she said.
She said he had a job with the Tunapuna-Piarco Regional Corporation.
“If he is not working, he will go and fish. If he is not fishing, he will go in the bush and plant. He will husk coconuts and go on the beach and sell. All Nigel does do is go and hustle,” she said.
She admitted that he would “give talk, but to say he robbing people or distressing people in the area? Nah.”
The murder toll stood at 48 up to last night while the comparative toll on this date last year was 43.
