Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard Shoots and Kills Venezuelan Baby
At the request of Mayaro Rushton Paray, a member of Venezuelan parliament, an investigation has been opened to examine the events of this past Saturday night when, close to the south east coast of Trinidad and Tobago, a Venezuelan mother was injured and her baby was killed.
Shots were fired from a Cape class patrol boat, the TTS Scarborough, which has been deployed for two months to protect the maritime borders of Trinidad and Tobago.
The TTS Scarborough carries two high-speed inflatable boats, measuring 7.3 meters, which were deployed to follow a boat of Venezuelan migrants.
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Trinidad and Tobago’s coast guard is trying to explain why their officials shot the boat full of Venezuelan migrants and killed a baby who was on board.
“All of the available methods were used—the megaphone, the horn, the reflector and flares, to try and stop the suspicious boat,” claimed the coast guard in a press release. “However, it continued trying to evade the TTS Scarborough. In accordance with standard protocols, warning shots were then fired in front of the ship.”
The officers said that they fired on the motors of the boat because the migrants had tried to ram their boat into theirs, and that as such they were acting in self-defense.
According the same officers, once the boat finally stopped, and only then, did they discover that it was full of migrants, and that one of them was a woman who said that her baby “was bleeding.”
The injured woman was stabilized and transferred to a local hospital.
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The coast guard has claimed that they detected the boat coming from Venezuela as they were patrolling their southern borders.
In previous incidents, the coast guard of Trinidad and Tobago has also claimed that the lives of its officers were endangered. On this occasion, as they couldn’t stop the vessel, they “shot in self-defense at the motors of the suspicious boat.”
Their actions resulted in the death of a nine month-old baby, who died before reaching the hospital.
MP Mayaro Rushton Paray’s requested that the events be investigated in order to determine further details.
Featured image: Two patrol ships belonging to Trinidad and Tobago. Photo: Últimas Noticias.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
