Three charged with murder of municipal police corporal Anuska Eversley

Sascha Wil­son

Hours be­fore the fu­ner­al of Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Cor­po­ral Anus­ka Ever­s­ley, one of her col­leagues and two oth­er men ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly in court charged with four of­fences, in­clud­ing mur­der.

Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Con­sta­ble Jivon “Big­gs” Coop­er, 28, of La So­phie Trace, Clax­ton Bay; Kwame Arnold, 20, of Lodge Road, Clax­ton Bay; and Nicholas “Nico” Ram­dass, 24, al­so of Lodge Road, Clax­ton Bay, were re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody by High Court Mas­ter Deli­cia Bethelmy.

The charges stem from an in­ci­dent on April 19, when Ever­s­ley was found dead in­side the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion at Kings Wharf, and a large quan­ti­ty of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion was stolen.

The three ac­cused were joint­ly charged by Ag ASP Ma­haraj of the Homi­cide Bu­reau, Re­gion Three, with Ever­s­ley’s mur­der.

They al­so face a charge of pos­ses­sion of firearms with­out be­ing the hold­er of a firearm user’s li­cence or be­ing ex­empt­ed un­der Sec­tion 7 of the Firearms Act. The charge re­lates to 114 pis­tols, one re­volver, six shot­guns, two MPX sub­ma­chine guns and 173 firearm mag­a­zines.

A third charge al­leges pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion with­out a firearm user’s li­cence or ex­emp­tion un­der Sec­tion 7 of the Firearms Act. The am­mu­ni­tion list­ed in­cludes 4,355 rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion, 30 rounds of 12-gauge am­mu­ni­tion and 10 rounds of .38 am­mu­ni­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the men were charged with rob­bing Ever­s­ley of the firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, and us­ing per­son­al vi­o­lence against her at the time of, or im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore or af­ter the rob­bery. The charge states that the firearms and am­mu­ni­tion were the prop­er­ty of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Coop­er’s at­tor­ney, Kei­th Beck­les, raised con­cerns about his client’s dri­ver’s per­mit cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, along with al­le­ga­tions that he was the main sus­pect be­fore he was for­mal­ly charged.

He said he was con­cerned about “the prej­u­dice and risk of bias” to the ju­ry pool due to what he de­scribed as “sen­sa­tion­al and mis­lead­ing pub­li­ca­tion” about his client on so­cial me­dia.

Pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Rea­gan Ram­nanan, at­tor­ney-at-law, said the State’s case com­pris­es 20 state­ments, with an ad­di­tion­al 32 state­ments out­stand­ing, along with ex­hibits in­clud­ing the post-mortem cer­tifi­cate, pho­tographs and video footage.

He re­quest­ed un­til Ju­ly 24 to have the com­plet­ed file sub­mit­ted to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Beck­les al­so raised ques­tions about his client be­ing held un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der. Ram­nanan said that ini­tial­ly a Fur­ther De­ten­tion No­tice had been grant­ed for Coop­er, but be­fore the court ap­pear­ance he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der had been is­sued by the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

How­ev­er, he said the charg­ing of­fi­cer did not make that ap­pli­ca­tion and that he had not yet seen the or­der.

At­tor­neys Krysan Ram­bert and Pe­rusha Lord ap­peared as du­ty coun­sel for Arnold and Ram­dass, re­spec­tive­ly, and in­di­cat­ed that the fam­i­lies of both men in­tend to re­tain pri­vate at­tor­neys.

Mas­ter Bethelmy fixed Oc­to­ber 15 for the sta­tus hear­ing and De­cem­ber 10 for the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing, and gave di­rec­tions for sub­mis­sions from both sides.