Rape accused murdered at home

LYING on the spot where gunmen killed her son, Claxton Bay mother of eight Jean Subaran screamed and held her stomach, while speaking as though he was alive and listening to her.

“We love you. Jacko, what am I going to do now? You tell me. I am going down the road with you. You said you will bless me for my birthday, you say don’t study anything.”

Her son Neil Bhagaloo, 33, fondly called Jacko, was shot multiple times in the head at the family’s home at Teak Drive in Macaulay on Thursday. Shortly after 8 pm, relatives saw gunmen in the yard and, thinking they were plainclothes police, Bhagaloo opened the front door. The men began shooting. Neighbours heard more than ten gunshots.

The killers ran through some nearby bush and left in a white van that was parked on the shoulder of the southbound lane of the Solomon Hochoy Highway. No one else was hurt.

Yesterday, between sobs on the ground, Subaran said: “When I heard the shots, I said, ‘Lawd father, police killed my son,’ I was thinking police killed my bigger son. I never thought my baby would have died so.

“What you take his life for? You know what I did to mind my son?”

The father of two, Bhagaloo worked as a scrap iron dealer. He was on bail for allegedly raping a 16-year-old girl. Police from the Child Protection Unit charged him earlier this year and the matter was pending in the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court. His mother and other relatives said Bhagaloo was not a rapist and would have won the case in court.

Holding her head as she wept, Subaran said about a week ago she reported to police that someone wanted to kill Bhagaloo. Relatives said he received death threats after finding a large amount of scrap iron.

“Look what they did to my child. I told the police everything about the threats either Tuesday or Wednesday and they promised to come,” Subaran said.

Relatives said “strange men” believed to be the killers visited the house last week Monday and asked for Bhagaloo. St Margaret’s and Homicide Bureau Region III police are investigating.

In a separate incident, police continued a manhunt yesterday for the killing of 38-year-old Akil Sylvester, who was shot in a car at Railway Line Road, Ste Madeleine, on Thursday at about 9.30 pm.

Sylvester, police said, was taken to the San Fernando General Hospital where he died shortly before 2 am yesterday. Daniel Josiah, 30, who lives at Mon Repos, was also in the car and was wounded.

Police said he is in a stable condition at the hospital.