Kidnapped firefighter dead; body found down precipice near Arima home

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

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Rel­a­tives and col­leagues of kid­napped fire­fight­er Bruce Leza­ma had their worst fears re­alised yes­ter­day af­ter a body be­lieved to be his was spot­ted down a precipice along the Blan­chisseuse Road, Ari­ma.

An anony­mous caller in­formed po­lice of the lo­ca­tion of the de­com­pos­ing body around 8.15 am, fol­low­ing which po­lice and fire of­fi­cials re­spond­ed.

And while the of­fi­cial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is yet to take place, at least one rel­a­tive at the scene strong­ly be­lieved it was Leza­ma based on the phys­i­cal at­trib­ut­es.

A fe­male rel­a­tive, how­ev­er, was hold­ing on­to hope. “I pre­fer to wait on the DNA test.”

This, de­spite find­ing Leza­ma’s wal­let, which con­tained his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and bank cards, and his work-bag con­tain­ing mono­grammed cloth­ing be­long­ing to the Fire Ser­vice, which had been found strewn along the route lead­ing to where the body was found.

Leza­ma, 46, of Andy Es­tate, which is lo­cat­ed off the Bye-Pass Road in Ari­ma, had been miss­ing since Sat­ur­day.

The fire­fight­er with 17 years of ser­vice was re­port­ed­ly kid­napped from his home by two armed men on De­cem­ber 27 and forcibly bun­dled in­to his sil­ver Ti­i­da car.

He had been last as­signed to the Am­bu­lance Unit Head­quar­ters of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, which is based at Wright­son Road in Port-of-Spain.

Leza­ma’s car was found aban­doned on Tumpuna Road South hours af­ter he was tak­en from the house.

Video footage cap­tured by CCTV cam­eras at Leza­ma’s house showed he had been chased by the two in­trud­ers, who bound his hands and dragged him to his car be­fore they got in and sped off.

Rel­a­tives who turned up at the scene yes­ter­day fought back tears as they watched the un­der­tak­ers dri­ve off.

The body was found ap­prox­i­mate­ly five min­utes away from where Leza­ma lived, in a re­mote area not too far from a pop­u­lar recre­ation­al spot.

Wor­ried and un­able to sleep since they dis­cov­ered Leza­ma miss­ing, and fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s dis­cov­ery, a fe­male rel­a­tive point­ed to a group of po­lice and fire of­fi­cials and said, “They are say­ing they be­lieve he was killed and then dumped here, so that means he would have been killed Sat­ur­day.”

Leza­ma was robbed twice at his home with­in the last year, and it is be­lieved that af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing the sus­pects, he al­leged­ly con­front­ed one of them re­cent­ly.

The woman said, “I don’t know how much cau­tion you could take in this life again. Af­ter the two rob­beries, he in­stalled se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras and se­cu­ri­ty doors. He changed up his whole sys­tem. He tried to ma­nip­u­late the times he was in and out, and they still get him.”

“What else can you do to se­cure your­self?” she asked.

A younger fe­male rel­a­tive who re­ferred to Leza­ma as Un­cle Bruce said, “I am just feel­ing numb right now. I don’t know what to say.”

“He was such a hap­py man. Dur­ing Christ­mas time, he would come and drop gifts for chil­dren in the neigh­bour­hood. He was just this re­al­ly pleas­ant and nice per­son ... I don’t know why, why.”

They said he was hap­py and re­laxed over the Christ­mas hol­i­days and was last seen buy­ing a tank of gas on Sat­ur­day morn­ing be­fore head­ing home.

Snr Supt of the North­ern Di­vi­sion North, Sher­ma May­nard-Wil­son, sought to pro­vide com­fort and so­lace to the fam­i­ly mem­bers.

She as­sured, “At North­ern Di­vi­sion, we take this mat­ter like any oth­er mat­ter, se­ri­ous­ly and in re­gard to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we will be pur­su­ing all leads.”

She urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to con­tin­ue shar­ing in­for­ma­tion with the po­lice.

Mean­while, fire of­fi­cers on their way to pro­vide as­sis­tance in ex­tract­ing the de­com­pos­ing body was forced to aban­don their plan af­ter the fire ten­der they were in was struck by an on­com­ing car.

The ten­der, which was as­signed to the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion and had on­ly been put back in­to ser­vice two weeks ago, was hit by the dri­ver of a Toy­ota Corol­la at the cor­ner of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and Lopinot Road, Arou­ca, around 9.25 am.

Guardian Me­dia was told that nei­ther civil­ians nor fire of­fi­cers were in­jured dur­ing the ac­ci­dent.

And the Fire Ser­vice was forced to re­spond to an­oth­er tragedy as a fire of­fi­cer as­signed to the Savonet­ta Fire Sta­tion at Point Lisas was stabbed mul­ti­ple times in the head dur­ing an at­tempt­ed rob­bery in Curepe on Mon­day night.

Fire of­fi­cials said the of­fi­cer was in sta­ble con­di­tion up to yes­ter­day.

Pres­i­dent of the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Sec­ond Di­vi­sion, Keone Guy, ac­knowl­edged that while the of­fi­cial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was not yet com­plete, “The cir­cum­stances strong­ly in­di­cate that the de­ceased is our miss­ing col­league.”

In a brief re­lease, he said, “The mat­ter is now ful­ly un­der the con­trol of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, and all es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures are be­ing fol­lowed.”

Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery, he said co­or­di­nat­ed search op­er­a­tions had been sus­pend­ed.

“This is an ex­treme­ly dis­tress­ing de­vel­op­ment for the fam­i­ly, col­leagues, and the wider fire ser­vice fra­ter­ni­ty. The as­so­ci­a­tion is pro­vid­ing sup­port to the fam­i­ly and is co­op­er­at­ing ful­ly with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties at this dif­fi­cult time,” he added.

The T&T Fire Ser­vice, in ex­tend­ing con­do­lences, said, “This loss is deeply felt across the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Fire­fight­er Leza­ma’s ser­vice and con­tri­bu­tion to the Fire Ser­vice and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will be re­mem­bered and ho­n­oured.”

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said she knew Leza­ma per­son­al­ly.

De­liv­er­ing brief re­marks dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s me­dia brief­ing, she crit­cised, “Not with­stand­ing this State of Emer­gency that this Gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ed, that you would see a dras­tic re­duc­tion in crime, mur­der and oth­er re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties, the CCTV footage was able to show per­sons ab­duct­ing him from his home, sub­se­quent­ly with­draw­ing mon­ey from his bank ac­count and then dump­ing his body on the Blan­chisseuse Road.”