’I JUST want to prove my innocence and start my life all over again.’

This was Peter Garcia’s plea to the Express five months ago, moments before he surrendered to homicide detectives and ended a month-long run from the law.

But Garcia never got a chance for that new life. He was fatally shot outside the Rio Claro Magistrates’ Court yesterday.

On May 12 in the midst of an extensive search for him, Garcia surrendered to homicide detectives at their headquarters located along St Vincent Street in Port of Spain.

And three days after that, on May 15, Garcia appeared in the Rio Claro Magistrates’ Court charged with last April’s murder of Simboonath Kumar and the attempted murder of Sherwin Wilson on September 28 last year.

On his first court appearance Garcia smiled. He was happy that he got the chance to tell his side of the story, his family told the Express then.

But dependent on who you spoke to, Garcia was one man with two different lives.

According to police, Garcia was Rio Claro’s most wanted man, a forest fugitive who was their main suspect in at least four other murders in the Agostini Village area.

He was a crazed killer who was single-handedly responsible for killing two of his older brothers Jason, 37, and Gerard, 41, in addition to Curtis Roy, 37, and 45-year-old Wayne Patrick Gonzales, police said.

He was also a suspect in the arson attack on his mother’s home on April 20.

But the following day on April 21, Garcia’s 64-year-old mother Elaine denied that he was involved in the fiery attack on her home and the death of her two other sons.

To his family Garcia was a ’scapegoat’ who was targeted by police who benefitted financially from the area’s real killers.

On May 12, while Garcia was still a fugitive from the law, he gave an interview to the Express and a television crew at his hillside hideout.

These are the excerpts from that interview.

’I never kill nobody in my entire life, never, right now I running for meh life, if I didn’t run for my life, I would have been a dead man all now,’ Garcia said.

Garcia told of police from the Rio Claro who wanted to kill him. He later turned himself over to the police and relatives said then, ’we were assured that he would not be harmed’.

However, when that relative was contacted by telephone yesterday she said her trust in the police was misplaced.

’We are now all in fear for our life, we don’t know what to do now, if they can get to Peter while he is in police custody, then what is left for us now, who can we trust?’ she questioned.

Garcia’s mother was too distraught to talk last night.

Family members yesterday held a candlelight vigil in Rio Claro to remember Garcia’s life.

Editor’s Note: Excerpts of the interview were deliberately not published before to protect the fairness of Peter Garcia’s trial