Relatives seek answers after man killed by cops at beach lime

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Rel­a­tives of 24-year-old Bar­i­on Pat­ter­son are de­mand­ing an­swers af­ter he was killed in a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing over the week­end.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Pat­ter­son, of St Joseph, and an­oth­er sus­pect were shot by po­lice dur­ing a con­fronta­tion around 2.55 am on Mon­day in Ch­aguara­mas.

Po­lice said act­ing Sgt Gar­cia and PCs Rogers and Nar­ine re­spond­ed to a re­port of sus­pects on the premis­es of the Mil­i­tary Mu­se­um. Up­on ar­rival, the of­fi­cers en­coun­tered three peo­ple, two males and one fe­male, on the south-east­ern side of the com­pound.

The TTPS said dur­ing the en­counter, one of the males came through a gate and al­leged­ly lunged at the of­fi­cers armed with a knife. In re­sponse, one of the of­fi­cers dis­charged his ser­vice firearm, strik­ing the male sus­pects. It said both sus­pects were tak­en for med­ical treat­ment and Pat­ter­son lat­er suc­cumbed to his in­juries at hos­pi­tal. The sec­ond male sus­pect, aged 17, was treat­ed at the St James In­fir­mary and trans­ferred to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

It said the fe­male, al­so 17, was de­tained in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent.

But Pat­ter­son’s rel­a­tives de­mand­ed an­swers about how he was killed.

A rel­a­tive said Pat­ter­son, who worked as a straight­en­er and painter, reg­u­lar­ly went on night­time swims with the teenag­er. They said the pair reg­u­lar­ly vis­it­ed their usu­al spot near the Ch­aguara­mas Mu­se­um.

Pat­ter­son’s griev­ing rel­a­tive said the fam­i­ly be­came con­cerned when the group did not re­turn home as ex­pect­ed. It was on­ly af­ter mak­ing in­quiries that they learned what hap­pened.

The woman told Guardian Me­dia that both Pat­ter­son and the teenag­er were dressed in swimwear when the shoot­ing oc­curred.

“He is not some­body who usu­al­ly goes and lime,” she said, adding that he was ac­cus­tomed to “do­ing the usu­al night beach like they al­ways do.”

Rel­a­tives said Pat­ter­son’s body had not been tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James as of yes­ter­day, and they had not been al­lowed to see him since his death.

They al­so main­tained Pat­ter­son was not known to po­lice and had nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly been in trou­ble with the law.