The brutal and shocking assassination of prominent Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal early on Sunday morning is now the number-one investigation engaging the T&T Police Service (TTPS).
The statement was made by Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams during a press conference at the Police Administration Building, Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, late yesterday evening.
It came on the evening of the day that Seetahal, a former Independent Senator and Law Association president, was shot dead while returning home from a Woodbrook casino early Sunday morning.
Williams said: “We want to give the country the assurance that the TTPS is using all the available resources, internal and external, to ensure that we treat with this investigation as a number-one priority for the organisation, with the clear intention of pursuing it so vigorously that we can bring the perpetrators to justice in the shortest period of time.”
Williams said he had already assembled a team of investigators from various divisions, departments and units to investigate the murder, which left the legal fraternity and the country in a state of shock, grief and confusion.
“All available resources will be assigned to this investigation. So if there is a need for 1,000 officers to be assigned and that is what is necessary, we assign 1,000 officers,” Williams said.
Although he admitted investigators had found some evidence on the crime scene, Williams repeatedly told the media his officers had not ruled out any motive for the killing and were pursuing their investigation with “an open mind.”
Williams told reporters investigators would be reviewing CCTV footage from cameras at business places on the route used by Seetahal to assist in the investigation, but also made a plea for eyewitnesses to come foward.
He assured the police would provide protection to eyewitnesses who were willing to go beyond giving mere anonymous tips to investigators.
But Williams and his two senior colleagues DCP Glenn Hackett and ACP Wayne Dick, who flanked him, all agreed that investigators would be relying strongly on scientific evidence in the case.
“What we have done, as an investigative team, is to accentuate the level of efficiency with which we have managed the crime scene so that all the samples of scientific data that would be of assistance to us in the successful completion of this instant matter will be brought to the floor,” Hackett said.