JOEY BARTLETT

“What threat could a sleeping man pose?”

That is the question Wendy De Gale wants the police officers who shot and killed her son on Tuesday morning at his Sangre Grande home to answer.  

In an interview at her Immortelle Crescent home on Tuesday, the grieving mother told Newsday she wants justice for Brandon De Gale’s death.

De Gale described 33-year-old Brandon as a hard-working family man. He was a contractor. 

She said that at around 4.40 am, she heard officers knocking at her front door. 

De Gale said her other son opened the door, and police started to search her home, eventually leaving empty-handed. 

She said the officers then went to the back of her home, where Brandon lived in a separate house with his girlfriend, a police officer, and his 13-year-old stepdaughter. The girl was not at home when the incident happened. 

“They went straight into my son’s bedroom, and I hear my son, he must have spoken to them, and then I hear ‘Pow!’

“What did they kill him for when he was sleeping?”

De Gale said this was the fifth time officers from the Sangre Grande station have searched her home.

“They are always searching here, they feel my children have drugs. 

“My child (Brandon) works from Sunday to Sunday, last night, he came from work tired, and all he wanted was for his girlfriend to make him dumplings and saltfish.”

De Gale said after the shooting, while her son’s girlfriend was being escorted out in handcuffs, she learnt Brandon had been killed.

De Gale allowed Newsday to view the scene. It was not cordoned off, and other people were also inside. 

“He was getting ready to throw his second children’s Christmas treat on (December) 16. He never had a gun or anything like what they saying.”

A release from police on Tuesday said at around 4.30 am on Tuesday, officers of the Eastern Division Gang and Intelligent Unit, attached to the Eastern Division Task Force, went to two homes in North Eastern Settlement to execute search warrants.

The statement said officers entered De Gale’s home, where they met a woman in the living room. They went into the bedroom, where they saw De Gale lying on the bed. The officers said De Gale pulled out a gun from under a pillow and pointed it at them. 

One officer, who said he believed his and his colleagues’ lives were in danger, shot De Gale once. 

The woman was arrested and taken to the Sangre Grande police station. Police seized a .38 revolver, ammunition and marijuana, as well as a security camera. 

Residents staged a fiery protest after the shooting and told Newsday they would continue protesting until they received justice. All roads into the community were littered with smoking debris when Newsday arrived. 

One protester said, “I know that boy from a baby, he never trouble nobody, all them fellas around here he does give work, I doh know how dem could sleep knowing they kill an innocent man.”

His girlfriend’s father, who was crying at the scene, said he went to the Sangre Grande Police Station, but officers did not give him