MORE POLICE GUNS GO MISSING

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

The po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the dis­cov­ery of a cache of miss­ing firearms and am­mu­ni­tion from the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion, on the night po­lice cor­po­ral Anus­ka Ever­s­ley was al­so mur­dered, King’s Wharf, has now widened to in­clude the dis­cov­ery of yet an­oth­er set of miss­ing guns – this time, from the of­fice of the may­or.

The sec­ond dis­cov­ery of miss­ing weapons came three days af­ter Ever­s­ley was found mur­dered on April 19 in­side the po­lice sta­tion at King’s Wharf.

A source close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that the dis­ap­pear­ance of the lat­est set of weapons was dis­cov­ered dur­ing an over­all au­dit of the weapons and am­mu­ni­tion un­der the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion’s care.

Guardian Me­dia learned that the act­ing ASP as­signed to re­place the su­per­in­ten­dent who was sus­pend­ed in the wake of Ever­s­ley’s mur­der, fol­lowed pro­to­col by ac­cept­ing the han­dover of weapons and am­mu­ni­tion at the San Fer­nan­do May­or’s Of­fice on April 22. Weapons and am­mu­ni­tion are al­so kept by the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice at the may­or’s of­fice. The of­fi­cer then pro­ceed­ed to check the in­ven­to­ry in the safe where the weapons were stored against what had been list­ed in the sta­tion’s di­ary.

It was re­port­ed that up­on check­ing the safe, the ASP found eight de­fec­tive re­volvers (all bear­ing se­r­i­al num­bers), along with two sealed box­es of .22 am­mu­ni­tion, nine rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion and one round of .38 spe­cial am­mu­ni­tion.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the check, the ASP de­tect­ed a hole at the back of the safe.

The act­ing ASP then checked com­plet­ed sta­tion di­aries and was able to con­firm that there ought to have been 12 re­volvers in the safe.

Ef­forts to get a re­sponse from se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day, while an of­fi­cial of the T&T Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMPS) de­clined to an­swer, as he said the in­ves­ti­ga­tions were be­ing led by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and it would not be right to com­ment.

The body of Ever­s­ley, a 42-year-old moth­er of three, was dis­cov­ered by col­leagues around 4.40 am on April 19, while the safe in­side the sta­tion that con­tained the guns and am­mu­ni­tion was found emp­ty.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is yet to con­firm the quan­ti­ty of guns and am­mu­ni­tion stolen dur­ing the in­ci­dent and an au­dit is cur­rent­ly un­der­way.

How­ev­er, when Ever­s­ley’s col­league Jivon “Big­gs” Coop­er, 28, ap­peared in court on Mon­day, charged with her mur­der, along­side Kwame Arnold, 20, and Nicholas “Nico” Ram­dass, 24, the court file read that they had al­so been charged with the theft of 114 pis­tols, one re­volver, six shot­guns, two MPX sub­ma­chine guns and 173 firearm mag­a­zines. A sta­tus hear­ing has been fixed for Oc­to­ber 15, while a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing is sched­uled for De­cem­ber 10.

A su­per­in­ten­dent and four of­fi­cers who were on du­ty on the night Ever­s­ley was killed and the guns and am­mu­ni­tion stolen, were sub­se­quent­ly sus­pend­ed as the probe con­tin­ues. For­mer TTMPS head ACP Sur­ren­dra Sagram­s­ingh has al­so been sent on leave and has since been re­placed by Wayne Mys­tar.