Outgoing MP for Point Fortin, Paula Gopee-Scoon, said yesterday Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and other cabinet members should visit Chatham and seek to help those hurting after a family of four was shot to death.
Speaking with members of the media yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, Gopee-Scoon described the situation as untenable.
“I am really asking at the most senior levels that the PM, the minister of national security (Carl Alfonso) and the minister of justice (Prakash Ramadhar), that they all get involved,” Gopee-Scoon said.
She said that the most troubling thing was that people were not willing to talk because they were fearful. She hopes to spend “a little time with them but more importantly pull the village together” in order to restore peace.
“Justice must be served, yes, but we have to leave the police to do their work... I know that they have their hands full and there are seven murders in the south west peninsula alone, but I trust that the police will do their work and these things will be solved,” Gopee-Scoon said.
In a telephone interview with the T&T Guardian yesterday, the patriarch of the family and the one who discovered the four bodies, Patrick Jouba, said he was assured by the MP that he would be assisted with meeting the costs of the funeral for the four as he could not afford the expense. He said that while assistance was promised to him by Gopee-Scoon he was not sure how or when the assistance would come.
Jouba said that the autopsy reports indicated that each person was killed due to gunshot wounds to the head.