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| PUBLIC OUTRAGE: Peter Garcia killed while being escorted by cops. |
THE criminal element upped the ante last week, symbolically laughing in the face of law and order when two gunmen fatally shot a handcuffed prisoner who was being escorted by uniformed policemen from the Rio Claro Magistrates’ Court to the next-door police station.
Around 10.30 a.m. last Monday, 30-year-old Peter Garcia was shot dead when two gunmen, disguised as construction workers, ambushed him and opened fire. The cops escorting him ran off when the shooting started. They were not armed.
Garcia died on the spot. He was shot seven times, on his foot, chest, back and head, according to autopsy results.
There was all round public outrage that Garcia was killed while being escorted by policemen.
Acting top cop, James Philbert, at a press conference held later that very day, described Garcia’s murder as callous and beyond bold-faced.
The incident occurred too close to home, President of the Magistrates’ Association, Lucina Cardenas-Ragoonanan said.
But while many lamented the brazen manner of his murder, an equally compelling story is what Garcia said before he was killed. Garcia, of Agostini Village, Rio Claro, spoke twice with this reporter before he eventually surrendered to the police in May this year.
The first was a telephone interview on April 22 and then a face to face meeting on May 12.
In publishing Garcia’s interviews then, the Express withheld some of the details of his story in the interest of ensuring that his court matter was not compromised.
He was then labelled the country’s most wanted fugitive by law enforcement officials.
He was accused of murdering four people, including his two brothers, shooting three others and burning down his mother’s home. As the police went for him, he went into hiding in the Rio Claro forest. Residents from Agostini Village, fearing for their lives, packed their bags and walked away from their homes. Garcia was single-handedly holding Rio Claro under siege, police said.
In his first interview, via telephone, Garcia told of a system of jungle justice which several years before when one of his cousins, Brian Garcia, was killed in a hunting accident in the Rio Claro forest. Before that incident, everybody in Agostini Village were friends; in fact, most members of the village are related to each other by blood. Garcia said he and his cohorts were part of a gang that stole cars primarily, and engaged in other criminal activity.
The first sign of a split in the gang followed the shooting death of Brian.
Brian died from a gunshot wound to the back of his head. The question arose: Who killed Brian?
Some members of the brotherhood claimed Brian was killed by his own gun in a freak accident. Others blamed Garcia, who was also on that fatal hunting trip, for his cousin’s death. The motive, it was said, was an earlier altercation between the duo.
The differing viewpoints led to the formation of two sides squaring off against each other.
The rift descended into an all-out war when Brian’s brother, Sherwin Wilson, was shot following a heated argument with Garcia on September 28 last year. Wilson survived three bullets to his head.
Garcia said a member of the gang subsequently ordered a hit on him.
Then the bloodshed began in earnest. On September 30 last year, two days after Wilson was shot, Jason Garcia, 37, was killed. He was Peter Garcia’s brother.
It was said that the gunman’s intended target was Garcia but he could not be found.
Instead Jason was called out of his home on the pretext that the caller had a message for Garcia. Jason was shot dead footsteps away from his family’s home.
Curtis Roy, 37, was the next to die; he was fatally shot on March 5.
One hour before he was shot dead, Roy had visited the Rio Claro Police Station to report that someone had shot at him earlier in the day.
The same man who had tried killing Roy that day, returned and finished the job in the front yard of Roy’s home, police said. Roy is the man who supplied the bullets used to kill Jason, Garcia claimed in his April interview with the Express.
On Good Friday, April 10, Gerard Garcia, 41, was shot dead. He was Garcia’s eldest brother.
Gerard, a farmer, suffered gunshots to his head, legs, and to both shoulders.
He died in a dasheen bush patch opposite his family’s home.
Wayne Patrick Gonzales, 45, was the fourth man to die, he was gunned down on April 17. Gonzales was followed into his house when he returned from work, and shot some 17 times in his bedroom. He was Brian’s uncle.
And on April 19, during Gonzales’ wake a gunman opened fire on people and police who were in attendance. Two of Gonzales’s relatives were shot in that incident.
The following day, on April 20, the home of Garcia’s mother, Elaine Garcia, 64, was destroyed in a suspected arson attack.
It was believed the fire was intended to lure, Garcia, now a fugitive on the run, out of hiding.
By this time Garcia’s notoriety had spread, wanted posters with his face, were plastered on walls all over the community.
On April 23, armed police officers guarded mourners at Gonzales’s funeral which was held at the Rio Claro Roman Catholic Church.
The day before, on April 22, Garcia spoke with the Express. He said he intended to give himself up to police the following day. He did not.
He told the Express that the shooting deaths of his brothers Jason and Gerard were ordered by a relative. Both brothers believed their cousin Brian was accidentally killed during the hunting trip.
On the other hand, Gonzales, and Roy, both believed Brian’s death was no accident. The warring factions had now lost two members each.
The three dead Garcia brothers all lived with their mother Elaine. Her son Darren is the only of her boys still alive.
Garcia claimed in his April interview that the leader of the faction who believed Brian’s death was no accident, was a key player in the area’s car theft racket and was known for paying off members of the Rio Claro police to look the other way.
Garcia also showed the Express a letter written to his brother Gerard, dated April 6, four days before his death, which told of a plot to kill both brothers, Gerard and Peter.
That letter, the work of an anonymous author, named several police officers as part of the assassination plot. Garcia subsequently handed the letter over to Homicide detectives on May 12, the same day that he surrendered to police.
Before he gave himself up to police though, Garcia gave a second interview to the Express and a television crew at a hillside hideout.
“I never kill nobody in my entire life, never. Right now I running for meh life, if I didn’t run for my life, I would have been a dead man all now,” he said then.
“They say I burn down my mother house, how I could burn down my mother house and my sons were living there too. They say I kill my two brothers. Why I could do that, that is my brothers, why I will kill my own brothers. Think about it, no sense making
in this. I just want to prove my innocence and start my life all over again.
“I is the scapegoat right now,” Garcia said. “I had Rio Claro under siege? I running for my life. I don’t know what going on. Everything happen, they calling my name, that is how they plan it, so (person named) could kill out everybody and kill out everything and how I running, everything coming down on me right now, so that is why I realise I have to come in to prove my innocence and get out of this problem.”
In the midst of the allegations by police and the alleged plot to kill him, Garcia’s main focus even then remained on his family.
“I need protection for my family, most important. I ain’t getting that from the police at all because my family dying and the police dealing with the people, the same men who killing out my family, and my family have no protection no how,” Garcia said.
On May 15, three days after he surrendered, Garcia appeared at the Rio Claro Magistrates’ Court charged with last April’s murder of Simboonath Kumar and the attempted murder of Sherwin Wilson on September 28 2008.
Kumar, the owner of the Triangle Too Amphitheatre and Sport Club located along Ganesh Road in Rio Claro was killed with a single shot to his head on April 19 last year.
Garcia told his relatives and family members to never attend court when his case was called because he feared that they would be killed if they did, his girlfriend Crystal Bullock said last Tuesday, the day after Garcia was gunned down outside the Rio Claro courthouse.
On July 11, Rudolph Contrero, Bullock’s grandfather was found in a car in Rio Claro-he was chopped and partially burnt with his head partially decapitated. Bullock and Garcia believed Contrero’s gruesome murder was a message to Garcia.
Bullock said three weeks ago Garcia said he thwarted an attempt by his cellmate to poison his personal food supply.
Despite everything, though, said Bullock, Garcia was still happy to have his day in court. He even made plans for his freedom.
Bullock told the Express that Garcia said that when he was a free man, he would take the Express into the jungle on a hunting trip to show his appreciation.
He felt safe in police custody, his family felt comfortable that he would be secure, she said in an interview.
On October 19, Magistrate Joanne Connor ruled that in relation to the murder charge against Garcia, the State had one last chance, on November 4, to come prepared to begin the preliminary enquiry.
When it seemed that Peter Garcia’s chance for freedom was close enough to touch, the dream ended. As he left the courthouse that morning , he was shot once in his foot. The officers who escorted him ran off after that first shot. Garcia shouted to Bullock’s brother, who was outside the courthouse, to run for his life. He also attempted to run but was felled with a bullet to his back.
The gunmen then walked up to him and fired at will. Peter Garcia died on the spot. |
