TTPS searching Matelot forest for beheading victim

Ralph Ban­warie

Po­lice are prepar­ing to search a re­mote area in Matelot af­ter in­tel­li­gence point­ed to the pos­si­ble lo­ca­tion where a man was killed in a video cir­cu­lat­ing on­line.

Sources said the footage, which shows sev­er­al men de­cap­i­tat­ing an uniden­ti­fied vic­tim in a forest­ed area, may have been record­ed in the North Coast dis­trict. The body has not yet been found, but a search is ex­pect­ed to be­gin to­day.

The vic­tim is be­lieved to be from Sans Souci. Sources in­di­cat­ed the killing may be linked to a drug deal gone wrong. A com­bined team of of­fi­cers is ex­pect­ed to en­ter the area as in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­ten­si­fy.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent for the East­ern Di­vi­sion, Christo­pher Pa­ponette, con­firmed po­lice are treat­ing the video as a se­ri­ous mat­ter amid grow­ing pub­lic con­cern.

In a re­lease is­sued by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, he said, “The footage, which ap­pears to de­pict a vi­o­lent as­sault in­volv­ing mul­ti­ple male in­di­vid­u­als in a heav­i­ly veg­e­tat­ed area, is be­ing treat­ed with the ut­most se­ri­ous­ness.”