A horrific double shooting that claimed the lives of a 25-year-old man and his 11-month-old son as they slept in their Dundonald Hill, St James home has sent shockwaves across Trinidad and Tobago, leaving a tight-knit community paralyzed by grief and fear, and reigniting fierce questions about the effectiveness of the country’s ongoing state of emergency (SoE) to curb spiraling violent crime.
On Tuesday, Joseph Sutton and his infant son Jayden Sutton were gunned down in their bed in what residents describe as a new low for the region’s long-running gang violence crisis. When reporters from the *Sunday Express* visited the community two days later to speak with residents and family members, grief and fear hung heavy over the quiet, mostly empty residential street.
Magnus Sutton, father of Joseph and grandfather of Jayden, shared the crippling pain that has driven his family from the home they once shared. “We couldn’t bear to be in the home,” he explained. “Every morning, Jayden would be up, playing and crawling about. Now he’s gone. My son would have been up early, tending to his common-law wife and child before running out to the mini-mart he operates down the road. Now he can’t do any of that. All the joy is gone. So that house is not a place we want to be right now.”
Sutton added that while the wider nation has already shifted its attention to other events and political headlines, his family remains trapped in acute mourning, with no clear path forward. “I know there have been other murders since. I know politics is taking up the headlines, but we are still suffering. We are still taking it very hard. We honestly don’t know what to do or what comes next,” he said. As of last Thursday, the family was still finalizing double funeral arrangements, with a goal of setting a service date by the end of the week.
Most residents declined to speak on the record, hiding behind locked doors out of fear of retaliation from local gangs. But those who agreed to share their views expressed overwhelming horror at the killing of an innocent child, a violence so senseless it has eroded the last shred of sense of safety even inside private homes.
Local resident Sandra encapsulated the widespread anger and despair felt across the community: “People not even safe in their own homes again…. Sleeping and getting shot? And a baby, too? Nah, this country reaching somewhere real dark now. And all this happening in an SoE? What is the point then? Because it is clearly not working.”
One long-time resident echoed that sentiment, noting that the unprovoked killing of an infant breaks even the unwritten rules of criminal conflict that once spared innocent bystanders and children. “This one hit hard,” he said. “It is not just another headline—it’s a baby. I still trying to wrap my head around that. If you come for a man, wrong is wrong, but you come for him. Back in the day, there was an order. These young, wannabe thugs have no care for anyone or anything anymore.”
Another resident added that the attack has left the entire community unable to sleep soundly: “When children are getting killed, people are genuinely frightened to even sleep properly because we don’t know what is coming next.”
This double murder is far from an isolated incident in St James, which has seen a steady surge of brutal gun violence over the past 18 months across Dundonald Hill, Belle Vue and surrounding neighborhoods. A timeline of major violent incidents in the area reads like a chronicle of growing chaos: Just two weeks before the double killing, on March 16, Joseph Sutton was already targeted in a separate shooting that left another man injured. In February, two men from Laventille, 20-year-old Israel Payson and 24-year-old Jubriel Worrell, were shot dead during Jouvert celebrations on Damien Street and Mucurapo Road. In January, 24-year-old Jair Gilkes and 21-year-old Miguel Joseph were killed in a shooting near the Belle Vue Community Centre, with a third man wounded. In December 2025, 56-year-old Nicole Ovid was beaten to death and her body left on a Finland Street pavement, with 60-year-old Kenneth Charles charged in connection with her killing. In May 2025, 28-year-old Mark Anthony Ellis was killed and his 20-year-old companion wounded in a drive-by shooting as they socialized under a shed on Alfred Richards Street. The earliest high-profile killing on record dates back to October 2022, when 30-year-old Korey Clarke and 31-year-old Samantha Patrick were found shot dead in their bed just off Dundonald Hill, leaving their unharmed seven-month-old daughter in the room with their bodies. Four men have since been charged in that double killing, along with weapons offenses.
Even for a community long accustomed to the threat of violence, the brutal killing of a sleeping infant has pushed residents to a breaking point, with widespread calls for action to address the failure of current public safety measures to stem the tide of bloodshed.