I am marked for death – Police informant

by Lyf Compton

Snitch, rat, informer…

These are names given to persons brave enough to give police information on serious crimes.

Being called any of these names, whether as a free man or as a prisoner, can have deadly consequences in any country — including St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), where 40 murders were recorded last year. Most of them remain unsolved.

But according to a Facebook user going by the name Preben Lyttle, he wasn’t afraid to tell the police what he knew about two murders committed in 2015 and his information led to two men being charged and remanded to Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP).

Today, though, Lyttle is singing a different tune. He now believes that giving the information to police was one of the biggest mistakes he has ever made, as he is now marked for death and has nowhere to turn.

In a Facebook post dated Thursday, May 18 at 9.19 a.m., Lyttle stated: “I have a story to tell and I need to tell my story because I live in a station and the police and them is making bad remarks and vexing with me when I make my post public.”

He went on to tell how he became a police witness and ended up being marked for death by what he described as “some mean, notorious fellows”.

According to the post, he came from a poor family and tried his best to stay out of trouble, but failed and was messed up by the “society and the system”.

“I had a few notorious friends I used to be with so I was planning on changing my life and this is where it all started,” Lyttle said. “My friends decided to make a plot to murder me so they started out to spread a number of rumours on top of me so when enough is all said and done they can murder me and get away with it.”

He added that numerous attempts were made on his life, so he went to the police and asked them to take him to his former friends and “warn the guys with my life”.

Lyttle claimed in his post that the police officers knew that the men he was mixed up with were “mean notorious fellows” so they asked him why the men wanted to kill him and he told them.

“They took me to the hospital and had me did a number of test bcuz the people and them who try to murder me has links in society… I did a urine test, I did a blood test and I even went to see a mental doctor who claims that I was not crazy and that I was only stressed out. She also told the police officers to find a place for me and keep me from going back to the village where I built my house,” Lyttle reported.

He added that while he built his house, he never got to sleep in it, because his life was in danger after he asked the police to warn the men.

“The police could not find nowhere for me to live, I decided that I would of go home and try to keep my tongue between my teeth and keep my mouth shut… While home I got in a argument with someone, so I noticed from [the time] I had the argument that people started to come back around my house and where my house is located in the area is not too safe,” Lyttle wrote.

He tried to talking numerous family members into giving him a place to live, he said, but he was unsuccessful, because they “did not want any problems in their lives and home”.

Lyttle claimed in his post that he went back to the police to explain to them that persons were coming to his house at night and throwing things on the roof.

“At first the person who was in charge try to run me from the station but I was persistent and they know I had several complaints, so they said that they would carry me back home to search around my place but the time they wanted to was not the appropriate time,” he added.

The scared man said that he went to another department at the Central Police Station, “to the officer who carried me to took my blood test, urine tests and the mental tests” and that officer told other policemen not to take him home, but instead let him remain to in the station because “of certain things”.

While all these things were happening to him, he added, he had no idea that the police had charged two men with murder, apparently using information that he had given to them.

“And they left me at home like my life is a gamble and did not telling me that I was a witness in the two cases until I came to make a report … weeks after,” claimed Lyttle on Facebook.

He said that he was allowed to remain at the Central Police Station during which time he kept asking to be informed of what was going on.

“After like six weeks they started to tell me that I am a witness in two murder cases so I got frustrated and started to smoke and while in the station a number of persons got locked up and even confess to the police that there [is] a group of people who want to murder me, who used to be my friends and that they are putting people against me by spreading rumors,” Lyttle added.

He claimed that he lived in the Central Police Station for about seven months, but described it as frustrating because “the police wanted to pressure me and the two men them that was in jail”.

Eventually that frustration got the better of him and he told the police that he would take his chances on the streets by keeping a low profile.

“So I take a few officers number . . . numbers and went back out of the station. But there was a war that was going on in the country, a triangular warfare with some of St Vincent and the Grenadines notorious men”, Lyttle added, noting that one day while at home he got a call from a constable who asked him if he was going to testify in the murder trial.

“I reply by saying yes okay,” he said, adding that his reality was jolted when a few days later he received messages via WhatsApp from several police officers, informing him that they were going to set the murder suspects free.

“So I was like OK, but remember I said that there was a notorious war that was fighting in our country so one day after the men them got freed, I overheard two telephone conversations that was ordering my death. So when the vehicle came to kidnapped me I had to lock myself in the downstairs of a house and called 911 several times before they came … This is a different group of people from the first set of people so the black squad police came and rescue me. . . ,” said Lyttle.

“When I came back to the station they told me that our police force in St Vincent and the Grenadines are poor and that they are untouchable notorious people living in St Vincent and the Grenadines who invest in the system and society. . . The first thing that the police force did was take me to a hospital a second time . . . [They] run some more tests like urine test, blood test and even a mental test. This time the same doctor said I was crazy because of my blood line, but the truth is that St Vincent and the Grenadines is corrupt, the police force, the justice system. . . .

“Every day I have to beg for someone to go for my lunch… I get my daily meals from my family members. This is a true story of my life. I need help along with our country St Vincent and the Grenadines,” Lyttle’s post ended.

When contacted, a senior police officer refused to comment on Lyttle’s case on the record, but confirmed a number of the things in his post, including that he had lived in the Central Police Station for seven months, but personnel complained his presence was often a distraction. SEARCHLIGHT has also learnt that Lyttle has a robbery charge pending before the courts.