Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of 41-year-old Tim­mi­an Fran­cois, who was fa­tal­ly shot by po­lice at his New Grant home on Sun­day, be­lieve his death was un­jus­ti­fied and are de­mand­ing jus­tice.

Sev­er­al of Fran­cois’ sib­lings and rel­a­tives, along with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, gath­ered at his home along Naggee Road, Hin­dus­tan, yes­ter­day, as they strug­gled to un­der­stand what hap­pened.

They dis­put­ed the po­lice ac­count of the in­ci­dent, de­scrib­ing Fran­cois as a hard-work­ing per­son who was not in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“God don’t sleep,” Damion Fran­cois re­peat­ed­ly said as he griev­ed the loss of his broth­er. De­scrib­ing his broth­er as a lov­ing per­son who was not a trou­ble­mak­er, Damion said he could not un­der­stand why po­lice claimed Fran­cois had ad­vanced to­wards them with a cut­lass.

“I de­scribe my broth­er like this: he is not a bad per­son. They could nev­er ever say that. I don’t un­der­stand why they say he rushed them with a cut­lass. I doubt a man would see three po­lice­men with big guns and rush them, know­ing a man like my broth­er. That could nev­er be right,” he said.

Damion said the fam­i­ly in­tend­ed to lodge for­mal com­plaints with the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) and the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau.

An­oth­er broth­er, Dil­lon Fran­cois, ques­tioned the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the shoot­ing, point­ing to the dis­tance of about ten feet be­tween the en­trance of the front door and where his broth­er was shot.

If, as the po­lice claimed, Fran­cois was armed with a cut­lass, he be­lieves that the po­lice used ex­ces­sive force.

The rel­a­tives be­lieve Fran­cois was asleep when of­fi­cers en­tered the house and that he was caught by sur­prise.

While res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing four gun­shots, one of Fran­cois’ sis­ters, who saw his body at the health fa­cil­i­ty, said she ob­served what ap­peared to be sev­en gun­shot wounds, in­clud­ing one to his head. She al­so claimed that his face ap­peared to show signs of in­juries con­sis­tent with a beat­ing.

Kissoon Ram­lochan, who has lived in the com­mu­ni­ty for 74 years, said he had known Fran­cois since he was a child and nev­er knew him to be a trou­ble­mak­er.

“He was a re­al good fel­la. How come the po­lice could shoot him up? They could have lock him up. The whole com­mu­ni­ty is talk­ing about this. This boy was not in­volved in any fool­ish­ness. It is hurt­ing me so much,” he said.

Damion ac­knowl­edged that his broth­er had been in­volved in a do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed in­ci­dent on Sat­ur­day but main­tained that it was not a home in­va­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, an act­ing cor­po­ral and two con­sta­bles went to Fran­cois’ home around 10.15 am to de­tain him in con­nec­tion with a home in­va­sion at Fifth Com­pa­ny Road, In­di­an Walk, on Sat­ur­day, in which a 41-year-old woman had re­port­ed be­ing as­sault­ed by a man armed with a cut­lass.

The po­lice claim Fran­cois’ front door was open, and they re­peat­ed­ly an­nounced their pres­ence by shout­ing, “Po­lice! Po­lice!”

Po­lice said a man wear­ing blue box­er shorts then emerged bran­dish­ing a cut­lass in a threat­en­ing man­ner. De­spite re­peat­ed warn­ings to drop the weapon, po­lice al­leged that the man ad­vanced to­wards the of­fi­cers, shout­ing, “I don’t f*****g care about al­lyuh po­lice!”

The of­fi­cers then dis­charged sev­er­al rounds from their ser­vice firearms, strik­ing Fran­cois.

De­spite ef­forts by med­ical per­son­nel, po­lice said, he suc­cumbed to his in­juries and was pro­nounced dead.