Traumatised home-invasion victim: Resume hangings to curb crime

An elderly Princes Town home-invasion victim who narrowly escaped the ordeal with his life, thanks to his nephew's brave efforts on the morning of January 15, believes hangings must resume to curb crime.

Sitting with Newsday at his Mount Stewart home on January 16, the 76-year-old man, who did not want his name published, recounted the horrifying ordeal in which he had believed he would lose his life.

The pensioner said he woke up around 4 am, and took his dog out for a walk.

While standing in his yard shortly after 5 am, he said he heard a vehicle stop, but did not pay much attention to it, believing someone had come to the nearby gym.

However, before he knew it, he said three masked men came at him and, with a gun to his head, forced him inside his house.

"We come here, we stand up. They say, 'Where the money?' I say, 'Let me tell you, we ain't have no money.'"

He said the men started beating him and threw him on the couch, ready to use a nearby extension cord to tie him.

"I say them go kill me. If them had get to go downstairs there, they'd have killed me and killed my sister-in-law."

Luckily, he said his 28-year-old nephew, who lived downstairs, heard the commotion and his screams and came in swinging with a cutlass, chasing them out of the house.

"They way he is, he big and tough. He does lift iron and thing.

"If them didn't have gun, he'd have beat the three of them, because he young, he big and he powerful."

Instead, the frightened assailants started shooting on their way out, breaking several glass panes in the front door and grazing the pensioner on his right shoulder.

He only receives an income from his pension, and believes the men targeted him because they saw him as an easy target while passing on the road.

Security footage of the incident posted on social media showed the ordeal lasting around a minute and 20 seconds.

The footage, from an outdoor shed, showed the man's nephew chopping one of the assailants at least twice as they fled. Police said they had not yet received any information that anyone had visited a hospital for treatment for chop wounds.

However, the pensioner admits he is fearful the men may return to seek revenge for their injuries. He said he had difficulty sleeping since the attack as a result.

He believes his attackers were young men. He believes a lack of opportunities in the country was driving young people into a life of crime.

"People ain't getting work in this country and they looking for people that have. (But) have or ain't have, they coming.

"You ain't have, they killing you."

While the current state of emergency, which began on December 30, was called to deal specifically with gang violence and weed out criminals, he believes bringing back the hangman would be an effective deterrent.

"You see, it have people in the prison and them have their phone and calling shots on the outside. All them kinda things supposed to stop.

"When people kill people and you catch them, you hang them instead of the people just living there (in prison)...you go see a lot of thing go stop."

"We country too small to have the kind of things happening. Right now, the police them 'fraid the bandit them."

While the death penalty remains on the lawbooks, it has not been implemented in decades and legal developments since then have made it almost impossible to carry out. The last person to be hanged in the country was Anthony Briggs, in 1999, for murder.

To help protect the police, the pensioner suggested they be armed even in their personal lives.

"The police them, what them go do, boy?

"The kind of thing in this country, when a police make he hours and going home, he ain't have no protection and the bandit does tell them, 'I know where you living,' and, 'I know your children.' Ent they (the police) have to back down?

"In this country now, all police supposed to have gun when they going home, the state this country in."

Police were able to identify the vehicle the attackers used as a silver Aqua, but it had false number plates.

Crime-scene investigators found four spent nine-millimetre shells at the scene.