Surrender

By MIRIAM ZARRIGA
BAKER and Edna Maeva have appealed to remnants of their son’s gang to lay down their firearms and surrender to the police.
“The death of our son (Tommy) should be the end of the ongoing criminal activities in Milne Bay,” they lamented in an exclusive interview with The National.
Tommy, a father of six, was 36 when he was killed in a shoot-out with police last Thursday night at the Viole Culvert near Kwaini settlement, a few minutes’
drive out of Alotau.
While police investigations are ongoing into the shooting, police remain on high alert because of several threats made to police by the gang now led by Eugene Pakalasi.
“The situation in Alotau now is something that worries us. We want the members to lay down their firearms and stop the criminal activities.
“We want peace to prevail in the province, especially in Alotau,” Baker and Edna stressed.
Both told The National that they would be writing a letter to the police to release their son’s body without a post-mortem conducted so that they could give their son a proper burial.
“What happened has happened and we want no more done to his body. We want to take him home to Cape Vogel.
“He (Tommy) told us that if anything happened to him, he was to be buried on his mother’s land,” Baker said.
Baker said: “Strong and stoic is how I would describe Tommy.”
He paused and said: “Tommy was independent and very friendly to everyone. We raised all four boys in a Christian home. Tommy was our third son and was the quiet and independent child. He did everything himself.”
Baker is a former Kiap and Edna is a former Rabaraba Rural local level government office officer.
“He had two best friends who he maintained friendship with as they grew older. Tommy, as a child attended Alotau International School and from there, I moved him to Alotau Primary School then Cameron Secondary School,” Baker said.
“During his early years at Alotau Primary School and during the holidays, Tommy took a job selling the Eastern Star newspaper and when asked what he wanted to be, Tommy often said he wanted to be a doctor.
“His interest for science took off when I brought a book on science back from Australia. Tommy would pour over the contents and study all the experiments and during a presentation, he rebuilt an experiment for his group and they presented well.
“Tommy excelled in Cameron Secondary School. But in 2005 while doing his Grade 11, he started mixing with the wrong group and he dropped out of school.” Whatever happened that year, Baker said he would not speak about it.
“When he took the road leading to crime and became the subject of various investigations, Edna tried to talk to him,” Baker said.
“But Tommy was adamant and asked that we do not try to change his mind. All we could do was pray.
“He would tell me I was not to talk to him about the law, he knew what the law was.”
Both parents travelled several times to Alotau to speak to Tommy, however, there was no changing his mind.
Edna suddenly spoke up: “I turned him in once to the police.”
“I did not like what was happening and I left our home and went up to what is known as Red Hills,” she said.
“When I called home and asked who was at home, they said Tommy and five other boys were at home. I prayed and I picked up the phone and made the call. After everything that happened that evening, I returned home the next day.
“Everyone told me that Tommy said someone called, saying police were on the way and I had turned him in, and he had to leave. After that, he stopped talking to me for a while.
“When we finally spoke, he stood outside the gate of our home and asked why I gave my womb away,” Edna recalled.
“Straight away, I knew what scripture that was. Children are inheritance from God, that is from Psalms, from then I told him, ‘son you win, I lose, from then on you have nothing to do with me and I have nothing to do with you’.” That was in 2014.
“In 2016, I left Alotau and I have never returned to Alotau, and whenever I wanted to return, something always happened.”
“But he (Tommy) was a good child, his upbringing was different, I do not understand what happened, but I knew he would never listen to either his father or I, especially when it came to the law.”
The parents said Baker even travelled to Alotau in January 2019 after the shoot-out and burning down of several houses in Misima Police Barracks, but Tommy could not meet Baker.
“In 2021, after the shoot-out and burning of the family house, I returned to Alotau, but still, I could not change his mind. When we got the news of his death, we were in Gulf,” Baker said.
“His (Tommy’s) life of crime is something he did on his own. We will never speak of it.
“We will remember him as he was, our son, brother, nephew, and importantly, a father to our grandchildren.”