In the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, a targeted ambush by masked gunmen left a young woman dead and her partner fighting for his life in a quiet Princes Town neighborhood, sending shockwaves through the local community and reigniting fears of violent crime. The fatal attack unfolded just 16 minutes after midnight, along Malgretoute Road, cutting short the life of 27-year-old Monifer Carrie, a resident of Beetham Gardens. Her traveling companion, 31-year-old Isaiah Cruickshank—who goes by the street name “Touchy” and lives in Princes Town’s Moonan Avenue neighborhood—sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was rushed into emergency medical care.
According to official police accounts, the couple was traveling east in a white Nissan Sentra when their path was suddenly blocked by another white vehicle, a Nissan AD wagon, close to the intersection of Manahambre Branch Street. Two assailants, their identities hidden by masks, exited the blocking vehicle and unleashed a barrage of gunfire directly into the couple’s car before making a quick escape from the area.
Though struck multiple times by gunfire, Cruickshank managed to flee the immediate scene to get help before returning to the ambush site. It was one of Cruickshank’s relatives who eventually found Carrie lying on the roadside after the attack. First responders transported both victims to the Princes Town District Health Facility, where medical staff pronounced Carrie dead at 12:36 a.m., just 16 minutes after the shooting began. Cruickshank was subsequently transferred to the larger San Fernando General Hospital to receive more advanced care for his injuries.
When local media outlet Express visited the tight-knit community just hours after the violence, residents were still reeling from the terrifying incident, with many describing profound trauma from the attack. One resident told reporters they counted roughly 18 separate gunshots fired during the ambush. A local woman, who asked to remain unnamed, shared that she immediately pulled her children out of their beds and threw them to the floor of her home to shield them from stray bullets when the shooting started. “I heard the bang, and shots pelting. I saw flashes. The shooting was for a good while,” she recalled. “A bullet went through the house. I took my children and put them on the ground. I told them to duck their heads. I was real frightened. My daughter is traumatised.”
She went on to detail the chaotic sequence of events she witnessed from her home: after the first round of fire, the wounded Cruickshank drove a short distance before crashing into a wall near a local standpipe. One of the gunmen then moved behind the damaged vehicle and continued firing, before opening the car’s front door and shooting again—at which point she heard Carrie scream. Carrie fell from the vehicle onto the road, while the second gunman fled through a residential yard adjacent to a local shop, before family members arrived to retrieve the victim.
A relative of Cruickshank shared that the couple left their two-year-old son with Carrie’s family for the night, meaning the young child was not present during the attack. As local law enforcement launched a full investigation, led by teams from the Princes Town Criminal Investigations Department and the Region Three Homicide Bureau of Investigations, officials confirmed that the country’s national murder toll now stands at 127 for the year to date. That figure is slightly lower than the 135 recorded during the same period last year.