'HE WANTED A BETTER LIFE'By INDARJIT SEURAJ Thursday, January 21 2010
He was shot 18 times about his head, chest and arms. And while Melissa Ali-Maule could not understand why her husband Jerrold Alan Maule, a firefighter, was murdered in cold blood, she suspected he might have been killed out of jealousy.
“He was just making a better life. He wasn’t in nothing,” she said.
She explained that since he became an emergency medical technician (EMT), and later, a firefighter, Maule had given up liming and stayed away from those who tried to influence him in any wrongdoing.
This, she said, is probably what cost him his life.
Maule, 27, of Tumpuna Road, Arima, was riddled with bullets at a parlour at Phase One, La Horquetta, Tuesday night.
A father of a three-year-old girl, Maule was assigned to the Fire Service Headquarters on Wrightson Road in Port-of-Spain.
The murder toll for the year now stands at 30, three less than the corresponding period last year. The Homicide Bureau has also recorded 15 murders from the start of this week to yesterday’s date.
At the Forensic Science Centre, Federation Park in St James, yesterday, Ali-Maule recalled her husband’s brutal killing.
She was right there, but could do nothing when two masked gunmen stormed into the tiny parlour and opened fire.
“He was standing there and I start to hear loud explosions...I see two masked men,” she said, adding, “I couldn’t do anything. I just know I had to be there with him.”
Maule’s mother Lynette Maule said from all appearances, her son was the target of the gunmen. But their motive remained a mystery.
“We don’t know who, we don’t know why. But it would seem he was the target,” Lynette said.
She described Maule as an “accomplished” man who was voted the “most outstanding” recruit when he graduated from the Fire Services academy in July, last year. He received three awards. Lynette said Maule had matured since graduating as an EMT, accepting his wife’s nine-year-old daughter as his own. “He became father to his step-daughter and loved her as his own. I commended him for that. How often do you see someone taking on a responsibility like that?”
For the killers she had a strong message, “You have taken from this world a wonderful man who has made and who was planning to make a meaningful contribution to the people of this land.”
No arrests have been made into the shooting. Arouca Homicide is investigating.
