A wave of brutal violence shattered months of hard-won calm in one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most persistent crime hotspots on Thursday morning, when heavily armed assailants stormed a busy Laventille gas station and opened fire, leaving three local men dead.
The attack unfolded just after 9 a.m. at the Unipet gas station, located at the high-traffic intersection of Eastern Main Road and Morvant Old Road. The triple killing pushed the country’s total murder count for the year to 209, according to official police data.
Law enforcement has formally identified the three victims as 56-year-old Selvon Jack, a resident of Lot 60 Chinapoo, Morvant; 29-year-old Makal Campbell, of 13 Poui Street, Morvant; and 23-year-old Malique Akhil Williams, who lived on Erica Street in Laventille. Witness accounts collected by the *Sunday Express* paint a chaotic picture of the assault: one victim was in the process of refueling his vehicle when the gunmen entered the station and began shooting, a second victim was seated inside a car at a neighboring pump, and the third was crossing the station’s parking lot when he was struck by gunfire. After carrying out the attack, the gunmen fled the scene in a stolen white Nissan Tiida, according to initial police reports.
In an exclusive interview with the *Sunday Express*, Senior Superintendent Raymond Thom, head of the Port of Spain Police Division, voiced deep frustration over the attack, which came during an extended period of reduced violence in Laventille tied to a local community peace accord. “Port of Spain has been quiet for over a month. We are disappointed that during this peace accord that is supposed to exist, that this can happen,” Thom said. “Some people are not holding to the order that was established, but we are doing what we have to do to maintain law and order.”
Multiple specialized law enforcement units responded to reports of what witnesses initially described as a loud explosion shortly after 9:15 a.m., including officers from the Port of Spain Division, the Inter-Agency Task Force, the Guard and Emergency Branch, and the North Eastern Division. When first responders arrived, they found the three victims’ bodies on the gas station compound. Investigators are still working to confirm whether only one of the three men was the primary target of the attack, Thom said, noting that an innocent bystander who happened to be refueling may have been an unintended casualty.
“On arrival they observed the bodies of three persons lying on the compound of the gas station. Two of the persons were residents of Morvant, and one was from Laventille,” Thom said. “It appears that someone not involved who was just fuelling their vehicle might have been a casualty. That possibility does exist.”
As of Friday morning, investigators have already located a vehicle that persons of interest in the case are believed to have used following the attack. Thom issued a public appeal for community cooperation, urging local residents to reject gang-related violence and assist law enforcement in solving the case. He added that police are moving quickly to prevent any cycle of retaliatory violence that could follow the triple killing.
The attack comes amid an ongoing state of emergency declared to address the country’s persistent violent crime crisis, which Thom said police have been using to target known gang leaders and high-risk criminal figures. Under the current state of emergency, no curfew or movement restrictions are in place, but authorities have been granted expanded powers to issue preventive detention orders for known criminal suspects. To date, the Port of Spain Division has executed more than 90 such detention orders, Thom said, and most major gang leaders in the area are currently incarcerated. Even so, he acknowledged, remaining criminal elements are still active in the area, carrying out gang rivalries and reprisal attacks.
“However, there are still elements that we are looking for and there are still persons involved in criminality and carrying out gang activities and reprisals,” Thom said.
A multi-unit investigative task force comprising detectives from the North Eastern Division, Port of Spain Division, the Homicide Bureau, and regional intelligence units has been assembled to uncover the motive for the attack and apprehend the responsible suspects, with a goal of bringing the assailants to court as quickly as possible.