35 years after 1990 attempted coup – Pain never fades for husband of murdered clerk

FOR Stanford Thomas, 35 years have not begun to dull the pain of the loss of his common-law wife during the attempted coup of July 27, 1990, and the lack of clarity of what exactly happened to her and the lack of concern by subsequent governments have just deepened the hurt.

Lorraine Caballero, 34, was a clerical officer in the Ministry of Legal Affairs at the Red House and, though separated at the time, Thomas loved her deeply and they kept in touch.

Recalling the events of the day, Thomas, 69, told Newsday he was a carpet installer at the time. He left work on Ariapita Avenue and, as was his custom, he went to visit Caballero at the Red House before heading to his East Dry River home.

When he got to the Red House around 3.30 pm, he learned she had stepped out but would return soon. He waited about 30 minutes when he started to get a bad feeling.

“While I was inside, I heard a voice telling me, ‘Stanford, come out of there.’ I say, ‘What is this boy? Who's talking to me?’ But I leave the Red House and lean up outside on a railing.”

He kept hearing the voice, so he eventually left to head home. While walking out of the Red House, he met her on Hart Street as she was returning to work. She let him know their two boys, Akee and Kelamo Caballero, who were 13 and ten respectively at the time, were at his home.

When he got there around 6 pm, he heard an explosion.

“When I look up, I see Port of Spain with big black smoke shooting up in the air. Later, I learned it was Police Headquarters that was burning.”

Then Kelamo approached him and said he told his mother not to go to work today because he dreamed she was burning in the Red House. She told Kelamo that, as it was month-end, she would collect her pay and buy some groceries before returning home.

“But she never did. She never did,” he said between sobs.

For the next three days, he and their sons went to Caballero’s home in San Juan to make sure she was alright, but she was not there. He believed she was one of those being held hostage by the Jamaat al Muslimeen, but there was no news, so he started looking for her.

He first went to the Port of Spain General Hospital, but there was no record of her. He then inquired for her at the San Juan Police Station, Camp Ogden army base in Long Circular and at the Police Barracks in St James. On the sixth day of the coup, on August 1, the insurgents released the hostages, but Caballero did not return home.

“I realise something has to be wrong. We were waiting for somebody to call us and tell us something. But on August 7, on my birthday, they called me and told me to come down to forensics.”

Thomas, as well as Caballero’s mother and sister, went to the Forensic Science Centre in Federation Park to identify the body. He said the women did not want to look, but he had to.

Barely able to get the words out, he said, “They bring she outside in a garbage bag and all I was seeing was bones because she already start to decay, but I recognised her by the clothes I saw her with on the last day

“On my birthday, what I experienced, I wouldn’t like anybody to experience that.”

Her family was told she died of multiple gunshot wounds, that she was found with her head resting on her handbag and there was a bottle of water nearby.

Obviously distressed, he told Newsday no one knew how he felt every year in July and August, as the coup anniversary came around.

“I went through plenty but I don’t like to talk about it. I never tell anybody. As July reaches...”

He said the event destroyed his family and his life. He recalled, in his rush to leave the Red House that day he left, and lost, his tools so he could not work even if he had the emotional strength to do so, and eventually he turned to drugs.

It was his eldest son, Jamal, who eventually spoke to him and carried him to get baptised. That made him see he was hurting himself and his children, and he decided to change.

He began selling torshore (nenwah or nenwa), which, when dried, is used as a loofa, to make a living.

Thomas said he tried to get assistance for his two sons. He had a brief meeting with the late prime minister, Patrick Manning, who told him he could not get assistance because it was “not a government issue.”

“Nobody helped me and my children. I don’t know if they helped the grandmother (Caballero’s mother), and she never assisted me or what, but the state never did.

“So I’m asking my government, which is the UNC, in what way they could assist Lorraine’s children and grandchildren?”

He said over the decades, the only people who even tried to help him were former NAR minister Jennifer Johnson, who was also held hostage at the Red House, and one of the insurgents and his wife.

“I don’t know who knows, but I don’t know why (leader of the Jamaat) Abu Bakr do that. I would really like to know. I would like to get justice somehow. Just help my children and grandchildren. I done coming out of this life already.”

As distressing as his experiences around the loss of his wife were, those were not the only crosses Thomas had to bear.

In October 2009, Akee was killed in a police shooting with two other men at Juman Drive, Second Caledonia, Morvant. One man, Codi Alves, miraculously survived by pretending to be dead.

The inquest into that police fatal killing is yet to get off the ground, and Alves has given a video-recorded statement to the Police Complaints Authority in July 2020.

In addition, Kelamo turned to alcohol to deal with the loss of his best friend and brother, one of his two daughters died, and, just a few months ago, one of his three grandchildren was shot and killed.

Despite it all, Thomas continues to have hope for the future of his descendants and for the government he voted for to help them.