Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The day be­fore Tim­mi­an Fran­cois was shot and killed by po­lice, he al­leged­ly went to his for­mer girl­friend’s home armed with a cut­lass and as­sault­ed her.

In an in­ter­view at her Moru­ga home yes­ter­day, 41-year-old Jil­lian Ri­ley said she was sad­dened by his death but felt she had no choice but to re­port him to po­lice be­cause she feared for her life.

Ri­ley ac­knowl­edged that Fran­cois was gen­er­al­ly lov­ing and fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed, but said he had been abu­sive to­wards her. She said she end­ed their six-month re­la­tion­ship in Sep­tem­ber, but he con­tin­ued vis­it­ing her home.

The moth­er of three said Oc­to­ber 31 was the first time she re­port­ed him to po­lice, af­ter he al­leged­ly ar­rived in­tox­i­cat­ed and as­sault­ed her.

“This time when he came with the cut­lass, I just couldn’t take it no more be­cause he just do­ing it in front of them chil­dren. This is not one time or two time or three time or four time he did it,” she said.

Ri­ley said Fran­cois al­so con­front­ed a man who was re­pair­ing a win­dow in her bed­room, which she said Fran­cois had pre­vi­ous­ly bro­ken. She said the man was re­lat­ed to a po­lice of­fi­cer.

Ri­ley showed footage of Fran­cois walk­ing through her house with the cut­lass and played a threat­en­ing and abu­sive voice mes­sage she said he had sent her ear­li­er.

She said she called po­lice while flee­ing from Fran­cois, but he had left by the time of­fi­cers ar­rived. She al­leged that he re­turned af­ter they had de­part­ed.

Ri­ley said she lat­er went to the po­lice sta­tion, where Fran­cois al­so ar­rived. She said he told of­fi­cers that he loved her be­fore leav­ing.

She said she asked po­lice whether mak­ing a re­port would jeop­ar­dise Fran­cois’ job, as she knew how much he val­ued it. Ri­ley said an of­fi­cer told her they would speak to him.

She al­so said she called Fran­cois that morn­ing and told him po­lice were com­ing.

Ri­ley in­sist­ed that she did not know any of the of­fi­cers per­son­al­ly and had no idea the sit­u­a­tion would end with Fran­cois be­ing shot dead.

“I’m very, very sor­ry about his death, but I did not know any­thing about that,” she said.

She said she was not con­demn­ing the po­lice, ar­gu­ing that the out­come could have been dif­fer­ent if of­fi­cers had not re­spond­ed.

“Many times we call the po­lice and we res­cue, right, and the po­lice doesn’t re­spond. But if the po­lice didn’t re­spond and I was on the dif­fer­ent end of the sit­u­a­tion, the sto­ry would have talked dif­fer­ent­ly,” she said.

“I thank God that I’m alive. I am not hap­py that he is dead. But if the po­lice had locked him up, know­ing this in­di­vid­ual, would he have not come to ter­rorise my life?”

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice re­port, of­fi­cers went to Fran­cois’ Naggee Road home to de­tain him in con­nec­tion with a home in­va­sion. He al­leged­ly came out of a bed­room armed with a cut­lass and ig­nored of­fi­cers’ warn­ings to drop the weapon be­fore at­tack­ing them.

The re­port said two of­fi­cers each fired two shots in his di­rec­tion.

When con­tact­ed, Fran­cois’ fam­i­ly de­clined to com­ment on Ri­ley’s claims but main­tained that po­lice had used ex­ces­sive force.

His rel­a­tives, who had pre­vi­ous­ly com­plained that they had not re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about his body, said they were fi­nal­ly able to iden­ti­fy it at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day.

They were told there was a back­log of au­top­sies and that no spe­cif­ic date could be pro­vid­ed for his post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.