Freed murder accused shot in New Grant

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a third at­tempt on the life of Aaron Grap­pie—one of the men once charged in the 2005 kid­nap­ping and mur­der of busi­ness­woman Sam­daye Ram­per­sad—af­ter he was shot in New Grant, Princes Town, on Fri­day.

The lat­est at­tack marks the third time in un­der two years that Grap­pie has been tar­get­ed by gun­men, rais­ing con­cerns among in­ves­ti­ga­tors about a pos­si­ble pat­tern linked to one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most no­to­ri­ous kid­nap­ping cas­es. His con­di­tion has not yet been of­fi­cial­ly dis­closed.

Grap­pie, of Farm­ers Trace, first came to na­tion­al at­ten­tion as one of sev­er­al men ac­cused in the 2005 ab­duc­tion and killing of Ram­per­sad, a San Juan busi­ness­woman who was kid­napped out­side her store by masked gun­men.

Ac­cord­ing to court ev­i­dence, Ram­per­sad was held by her cap­tors and lat­er tak­en to Clax­ton Bay, where she was beat­en, fa­tal­ly as­sault­ed and buried alive in a shal­low grave.

Her de­com­posed body was dis­cov­ered 41 days af­ter her ab­duc­tion in Jan­u­ary 2006, in a cashew field in Car­oli­na Vil­lage.

Pros­e­cu­tors al­leged the kid­nap­ping stemmed from a fi­nan­cial dis­pute, with the vic­tim mis­tak­en­ly be­lieved to be linked to a man who owed mon­ey.

Grap­pie was among a group that in­clud­ed Phillip “The Boss” Boodram, Roger Mootoo, Ricky Singh and Kervin Williams, who were all im­pli­cat­ed in the plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion of the crime.

The le­gal pro­ceed­ings spanned years, with mul­ti­ple tri­als, hung ju­ries and ap­peals. Some ac­cused were con­vict­ed of manslaugh­ter and sen­tenced to lengthy prison terms, while oth­ers—in­clud­ing Grap­pie—were re­tried sev­er­al times be­fore even­tu­al­ly be­ing freed af­ter ex­tend­ed in­car­cer­a­tion.

Since their re­lease in 2022, sev­er­al men linked to the case have been killed or at­tacked. Boodram was lat­er shot dead by po­lice, while Williams and Mootoo were gunned down in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in Clax­ton Bay.

Grap­pie him­self has been re­peat­ed­ly tar­get­ed. On 29 June 2024, he was shot at his home in Farm­ers Trace, New Grant af­ter a masked gun­man opened fire, leav­ing him crit­i­cal­ly in­jured. In Jan­u­ary 2026, he was again wound­ed when a gun­man ex­it­ed a ve­hi­cle and opened fire while he was vis­it­ing a friend in St Mary’s Vil­lage, Moru­ga.

Fri­day’s shoot­ing now adds to that pat­tern as in­ves­ti­ga­tors try to de­ter­mine whether the at­tacks are linked to his past or to oth­er on­go­ing dis­putes.

Po­lice have not con­firmed a mo­tive.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing.