Solider killed in Edinburgh 500 attack

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing how a quan­ti­ty of spent shells bear­ing the mark­ing ‘TTR’ and ‘TTAG’ came to be used in a sol­dier’s mur­der in Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day night.

Po­lice said Jealani Williams, 30, a pri­vate with the T&T Reg­i­ment was about to en­ter his Nis­san X-Trail out­side a par­lour on La Clave Road, Ed­in­burgh 500, at around 9.30 pm, when an­oth­er ve­hi­cle drove along­side his.

A gun­man got out of the car and shot Williams sev­er­al times be­fore get­ting back in­to his ve­hi­cle and speed­ing off.

Of­fi­cers from the Ch­agua­nas CID were called in with a dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer, who de­clared Williams dead at the scene.

Williams’ pis­tol was found still in the waist­band of his pants.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene of the mur­der yes­ter­day morn­ing, the faint out­line of blood­stains where Williams lay were still vis­i­ble on the as­phalt. Sev­er­al near­by res­i­dents claimed they were not at home at the time of the shoot­ing.

One man said the near­by Ed­in­burgh 500 Recre­ation Ground host­ed a foot­ball tour­na­ment around the time of the shoot­ing and spec­u­lat­ed that Gar­cia Williams may have at­tend­ed the event.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er res­i­dent, who asked not to be named, said he was un­set­tled by in­ci­dent, not­ing that Ed­in­burgh 500 was gen­er­al­ly a peace­ful res­i­den­tial area. He was wor­ried that such at­tacks could hap­pen with­out warn­ing and was con­cerned for the safe­ty of his fam­i­ly.

“I don’t un­der­stand this... I have a prob­lem with it and I am now tak­ing pre­cau­tions with my wife so that on a morn­ing when she has to go out to work, I will have to walk her out now. I am not com­fort­able with that at all ... a sol­dier this hap­pened to? For what rea­son?”

An­oth­er res­i­dent who lives on the street op­po­site the scene of the mur­der lament­ed that even an armed off-du­ty sol­dier could be the tar­get of gun­men dur­ing a State of Emer­gency (SoE).

“So what does that say about the rest of us who have no weapons to de­fend our­selves? We are in the midst of a State of Emer­gency and there are no po­lice pa­trols around here, what does that say about their abil­i­ty to re­spond to crime?”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Williams’ home to try to speak with rel­a­tives but no one was at home at the time.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said 16 spent 9mm shell cas­ings, two of which had ‘TTR’ mark­ings and one which had ‘TTAG’ mark­ings, were found at the scene.

There have been sev­er­al in­ci­dents where spent shells bear­ing the mark­ings of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices have been found at crime scenes over the years, with TTPS, TTDF, Reg­i­ment, Coast Guard and Air Guard shells be­ing re­cov­ered in those in­stances. In one of the lat­est in­ci­dents ear­li­er this month, a quan­ti­ty of spent shells bear­ing TTPS mark­ings were found at the scene of Min­ford Al­ick’s mur­der at the cor­ner of the East­ern Main Road and Gold­en Grove Road, Arou­ca.

One po­lice source said yes­ter­day that spent shells, once re­trieved, are tak­en to the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit (SERU) in Camp Cu­mu­to or to the bal­lis­tics sec­tion of the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, for fur­ther analy­sis, which in­cludes re­view­ing spe­cial an­a­lyt­i­cal pro­files to de­ter­mine the ori­gin of the am­mu­ni­tion, what type of weapon fired it and whether such weapons reg­is­tered on any data­base.

“They are sent for pro­cess­ing like any oth­er spent shells. Checks are made for fin­ger­prints are made on the shells, per­cus­sion cap mark­ings, ejec­tion port in­den­ta­tions or any­thing else that can as­sist with find­ing where it came from,” the source said.

In terms of TTPS rounds, the of­fi­cer not­ed that po­lice sta­tions usu­al­ly con­duct­ed in­ven­to­ry checks twice per day.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia ques­tions via What­sApp last evening, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said a me­dia re­lease will be is­sued to­day af­ter con­tact is made with Williams’ moth­er.

Of­fi­cers of the Re­gion III Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.

As of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, po­lice were un­able to con­firm a pos­si­ble mo­tive for Williams’ mur­der.