When Chaguanas mother of two Octavia Abraham woke up yesterday she expected to see her son Sherman Maynard walk through the front door, as he always did after completing his duty in Port-of-Spain.
However, the 60-year-old Special Reserve Police officer (SRP) was yesterday reminded of the harsh reality that Maynard, 27, would never walk through her front door again.
On Friday, Maynard, who had fewer than two years service, was shot outside the Port-of-Spain prison when prisoners Allan ‘Scanny’ Martin, Hassan Atwell and Christopher Selby stormed out of the prison gates. The prisoners opened fire on Maynard and other officers as they fled the jail.
The young officer was shot in the chest. He died while undergoing emergency surgery. Martin was also subsequently killed in an exchange of gunfire at a guard booth at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital. Atwell and Selby are still on the run.
Abraham, of Opal Crescent, Edinburgh 500, kept up a brave front while chatting with the Sunday Guardian as she clutched her son’s police identification card and looked towards her front gate.
“I expecting him home this morning (yesterday.) He work a 24/24 and he would usually finish by now (mid-morning.) He would have been home, bout 8.35 am he would have been home.
“I would have been looking out for him to go and do other chores, to go to the groceries,” she said, shaking her head.
Maynard, she said, always wanted to be a police officer because he came from a family of police officers. His father is retired superintendent Steven Maynard and his elder brother Sheldon, 34, is a police officer, she said. Maynard is also the nephew of Northern Division head Snr Supt David Abraham and cousin of Central Division head Snr Supt Johnny Abraham.
“He was a very, very good person. He likes to do work. He like to do work around the house, he always going to work. He never take a day off. He wanted to be a police officer,” she said.
Tributes continued to pour in for Maynard yesterday, as his colleagues and friends recalled his life on social media.Abraham said she had no regrets that her son entered the police service. In fact, it appeared that he was destined to be an officer.
She said after he graduated from the University of the West Indies he had applied to numerous places for a job, but was unsuccessful.
“I have no apprehensions about him joining the police service. He tried all over the place to get a job.
“I personally posted [applications] for him and he could not get any job. Then they had this advertisement about recruitment in the papers and he went and he applied and he got through,” she said.
But the grieving mother said she was still in shock over her son’s sudden death.
T&T IN POOR STATE
Abraham said, however, that today’s T&T was not the same one she knew growing up.
“The country get worse, it get worse than how it was. Prisoners just coming out and shooting people? I never see prisoners come out of prison with guns. I never see prisoners come out of prison with guns and shoot somebody,” she lamented.
She said police officers were not equipped to deal with today’s criminals, as criminals had more sophisticated weapons than the police. “The police just have simple weapons and the criminals have more. I do not know where they getting it, sophisticated weapons, and nothing is being done about it. You just lose your child and that is it, another statistic that is all.
“They come and wish you condolences and you have to grieve until the 12th of never,” she said.
She also sent a message to Atwell and Selby, saying they should think about their children too.
“God is in charge, anything could happen to them now. God is in charge,” she added.
Abraham said her son was planning to get married to his girlfriend, Danniel Huggins, on Valentine’s Day next year and was planning to buy a new car and house.
Maynard’s funeral has been tentatively set for Thursday at the Chaguanas RC Church.