Murdered father, daughter laid to rest

STANTON KEWLEY, one of the members of popular band 3canal, remembers the last meal he shared with Elliot Veerasammy on the last day of his life.

The two sat and ate curry-stewed pork with cassava and dasheen, not knowing then it would have been the last day of Veerasammy’s life and the last day they would share a meal together.

Like many of the mourners at Veerasammy’s funeral yesterday, Kewley remembered him as a “gem” of a person.

Elliot,62, and his daughter Sarah, 32, were shot dead on Wednesday last week at their Williams Street, Aranguez home.

Many family members, friends and neighbours said their final goodbyes to a man many described as “very loving” and a “gem of a person.”

The funeral, performed under Hindu rites, began at 8 am with six pundits leading the mourners in the singing of bhajans (Hindu religious songs). One family member, upon viewing the bodies, briefly fainted at the home’s entrance.

A friend of Veerasammy, who wished not to be named, said she never expected anything like this to happen. She also described Veerasammy as “loving and kind.”

Kewley remembered Veerasammy as “one of the most wonderful people you’d ever meet.

“An exceptional gentleman and a true gem.”

He said Veerasammy was an “avid mas man” who played J’Ouvert each year in 3canal’s band. Kewley said he would be on the band’s paint truck mixing paint and passing it out.

“He was just a loving guy. He helped create the Black Box that we know today. All the lighting bars...any bit of welding that was ever done since we transformed the Bohemia space to the Black Box, Elliot has been involved in.”

To Kewley, Veerasammy was not only a welder but an artist as he “could work in any material, any medium.”

The last project Veerasammy was working on, he said, was one for the Decibel Entertainment Festival at Queen’s Hall. Veerasammy assisted in building Decibel’s dragon wall, built out of plexiglass and metal frames.

Kewley was also one of the last people to see Veerasammy alive.

“I left here at 8.30 pm that night (Wednesday) and got the tragic news the following morning that he was shot not less than 45 minutes later.”

He described Veerasammy’s murder as very tragic and sad “because of the type of man he was.

“He lived his life and he enjoyed his life. Today he was supposed to go on an excursion that he was talking to me about right through. He used to hang out by the Samaan Tree Bar and he would say ‘I don’t miss one of their excursions. Stano you have to come one of these excursions one of these days.”

Veerasammy, Kewley said, was an A-class welder who also worked with mas legend Peter Minshall.

Asked how this speaks to TT’s crime problem, Kewley said this is what TT gets. “This is what we get. They say a people get what they deserve. By all means we have never seen about ourselves.

“The reality is we should have more vessels on the water patrolling because we don’t make guns here. They come into the country illegally and we have too many porous borders.

“Crime is a reality and crime is a product of poverty of course.”

Officiating pundit, Rishi Ojar Maharaj, reminded the mourners that as human beings nothing can be taken with one in death.

He said to the family, friends and neighbours gathered, that people often get caught up in the materialistic world and think that that is life.

“This land is not mine, it is not yours and definitely not the Government’s land. Only God alone...why do we find ourselves in this life fighting among the other for a piece of land or dust?” Maharaj asked. He said in TT people were failing as adults and as a society.

The bodies of Veerasammy and Sarah were cremated at the Caroni cremation site.