Had PH taxi driver Ossie Calendar accompanied his wife and children to Tobago this weekend, he may have been alive today.
Instead, Calendar’s lifeless body was found with a gunshot wound to the side of his head in San Fernando, on Friday night.
A report stated that Marabella police were responding to a report of a loud explosion along Alexander Road, Vistabella, around 11 pm. On arrival they found Calendar, 26, of Battoo Avenue, Marabella, slumped over the steering wheel of a blue Nissan Primera.
ASP Gomez-Coopers and homicide investigator Cpl Deo were at the scene and coordinated searches throughout the area for the suspect, but no one was held up to yesterday. Although there was a drug-link to the murder, investigators were unsure whether Calendar was involved.
According to his cousin, Nicole Leonard, he was working the Couva to San Fernando route for someone with whom he had a work-to-own arrangement.
Leonard said relatives were not sure if he was working last night. She, however, noted that there were several incidents of taxi drivers being attacked and robbed along that route.
She said Calendar worked late at nights to make an honest living for his common-law wife Sarah Baptiste and two children, ages five and one. But investigators said that the taxi drivers who were previously attacked were stabbed and robbed but not shot.
Robbery was ruled out as his phone, wallet and cash were found in the car. Leonard said Sarah and the children went to Tobago to visit Calendar’s mother and were trying to get a return trip back to Trinidad.
Speaking at the Plaisance Park home where she and Calendar grew up as children, she said crime in Trinidad was appalling.
“We look at the television and see crime going on but when it reaches on your doorstep, it is very hard to deal with, especially when you wake up to the news that your family member was shot and killed. It is not nice at all,” Leonard said.
She added that it was a tragic week for relatives as Ezekiel Burton, 20, who died on Tuesday after being knocked down by a car while crossing the road in Arima was also a cousin.