Four to face charges for murders of Gill, Mahabir

Four peo­ple are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the courts charged with the mur­ders of two friends whose burnt bod­ies were dis­cov­ered in the trunk of a ve­hi­cle in Va­len­cia last month.

Po­lice said the ac­cused are a 57-year-old woman from El So­cor­ro, along with a 45-year-old woman, a 27-year-old man and a 41-year-old man, all from Va­len­cia.

The charges fol­low ad­vice re­ceived on Mon­day from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard.

The vic­tims, Ken­neth Gill, 67, of Trinci­ty and Bernard Ma­habir, 71, of Tu­na­puna, were re­port­ed miss­ing to the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion on April 27.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors lat­er de­ter­mined that the men had last been seen on April 26 at a bar in the Lopinot dis­trict.

Po­lice en­quiries re­vealed that Gill’s bank card was used the fol­low­ing day to make cash with­drawals at au­to­mat­ed bank­ing ma­chines in the Ari­ma and San­gre Grande dis­tricts.

While con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in Va­len­cia, of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly dis­cov­ered a burnt ve­hi­cle along Tapana Road. Po­lice said checks car­ried out in­side the ve­hi­cle led to the dis­cov­ery of the burnt re­mains of two peo­ple in the trunk.

The dis­cov­ery prompt­ed a homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tion that even­tu­al­ly led de­tec­tives to the four sus­pects.

Com­ment­ing on the de­vel­op­ment, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro de­scribed the killings as “a bru­tal and sense­less act” that af­fect­ed two fam­i­lies.

Gue­var­ro ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the rel­a­tives of both men and said in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­mained com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing jus­tice was served.

“The Homi­cide Bu­reau moved with ex­cep­tion­al speed and dis­ci­pline, en­sur­ing that those re­spon­si­ble were brought to ac­count,” Gue­var­ro stat­ed.

He said the work of in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­flect­ed “the courage and com­mit­ment that the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­serve.”

Gue­var­ro al­so is­sued a warn­ing to crim­i­nals, stat­ing that po­lice would con­tin­ue pur­su­ing those re­spon­si­ble for vi­o­lent crimes.

“To any­one who be­lieves they can ter­rorise our com­mu­ni­ties, un­der­stand this clear­ly; the TTPS will find you, we will pur­sue you, and we will bring you to jus­tice,” he said.

The ac­cused are ex­pect­ed to be for­mal­ly charged in con­nec­tion with the deaths of Gill and Ma­habir. Po­lice have not yet dis­closed a mo­tive for the killings.