A senseless act of violence has shaken Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, after a 49-year-old father was fatally shot in full view of his young child at a popular public gathering space — just hours after he buried a victim of an earlier deadly mass shooting.
Masud Prosper, a long-time employee of the Ministry of Health who resided on Belle Eau Road in Belmont, had just finished picking up his 9-year-old son from football practice on the afternoon of the incident. At approximately 5:30 p.m., he pulled his black Mitsubishi Lancer into a parking zone behind the food court at Queen’s Park Savannah, a central open space frequently used by local families for recreation and public events.
As the pair sat together in the parked vehicle, an unidentified gunman walked up to the car and opened fire, striking Prosper multiple times. The attack was immediate, and Prosper died at the scene. Miraculously, his young son escaped the incident without physical injury.
Shortly after first responders arrived at the scene, Adisha Pierre, Prosper’s common-law wife, arrived with her daughter. In an interview with reporters, she described Prosper as a quiet, hardworking man who focused entirely on providing for his family and stayed far removed from gang activity.
“All I was thinking was he would have been having a time playing football with our son, but they killed him in front of his own child,” Pierre said. “He goes to work, he minds his business, he comes home, and he sees about his son. He’s a father trying his best out here and he didn’t deserve that at all. He never had any ties to violence or gang activity in all the time I’ve known him.”
Pierre confirmed that Prosper had spent that same morning at the funeral for one of the four people killed in a mass shooting along Lady Young Road in Morvant on April 19, the latest in a string of gang-linked killings to hit the country.
She questioned why her partner was targeted, saying the attack clearly appeared to be a pre-planned hit. “Why was my spouse targeted? This was a hit but why him? What did he do to deserve this?” she asked. Though Prosper was not involved in any gangs, Pierre said she believes his killing is a consequence of the rising gang violence that has plagued the area, adding that Prosper had repeatedly warned her to avoid traveling along Belle Eau Road due to safety risks linked to gang activity.
The killing brings the country’s national murder toll to 118 for the year up to the date of the incident, compared to 130 recorded by the same point last year. While the overall murder count has seen a minor year-over-year decline, the brazen nature of the latest killing — which took place in a busy public area in the capital, with a young child as a witness — has renewed public outcry over the persistent gun violence that continues to tear apart communities across the nation.