Police find dead man’s documents

Police have, at last, found Tambu Patrick’s passport and other personal documents, two weeks after he was shot and killed and 11 months after he requested them.

Family members say that Patrick, a Layou resident who was shot and killed on Sunday November 5, may have been alive today if the authorities had not misplaced his American passport among other documents he needed to leave St Vincent and the Grenadines.

On April 11, 2018 in Layou, police found Patrick with a Taurus 9 mm pistol, and 17 rounds of 9 mm ammunition without having a license under the Firearms Act. In January 2020, Patrick 36 at the time, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison after being convicted for the 2018 crime.

He was released in January this year after serving his full sentence and was requesting his passport to return to the United States of America, where he is a citizen.

Yesterday, a relative of Patrick said a police officer reported to them that Patrick’s documents were discovered in a bag at the Chateaubelair Police Station and may possibly be couriered to the US Embassy in Barbados.

The Embassy became involved after Patrick’s relatives reported the missing documents after he was killed.

“Nobody gave an explanation and Tambu would be alive and all this thing in Layou won’t be happening,” the relative said on condition of anonymity.

The “all this thing in Layou” being referred to are the two killings after Patrick’s murder and the one prior to his murder, four shootings that brought the murder count to 50 for 2023.

“The American Embassy is in touch with the police and they (the police) told us that they might have to courier it to Barbados for them.

“Chateaubelair has nothing to do with it (Patrick’s charges) and we are just speculating how it (the passport) got there…they did not go searching for it, someone just found it,” the relative explained.

Documents taken as part of bail conditions are usually stored at the Central Police in Kingstown and the fact that Patrick’s documents turned up in Chateaubelair is peculiar.

A call to the Police Public Relations Department was not returned, but a police officer did tell SEARCHLIGHT that an investigation into the missing, now found documents, is ongoing.

“I am very upset and Tambu would have been back in the States and he would not be dead. He was searching for those documents every day, up and down.

“We were believing he was not making a big enough effort, but that was not the case and the only thing left for him to do was go up there (Central Police Station) and make a stink and he was not like that,” Patrick’s relative told SEARCHLIGHT.