A quiet residential neighborhood in Corinth, Ste Madeleine, was shattered by brutal gun violence in the pre-dawn hours of Monday, leaving three men dead, a tight-knit community grappling with grief, and law enforcement scrambling to unearth clues about what led to the mass killing. The triple homicide on Sixth Street, Third Extension, has left more unanswered questions than concrete leads, with investigators still working to identify the perpetrators, map out how the attackers accessed and escaped the area, and pinpoint a clear motive for the bloodshed.
This attack was part of a devastating 13-hour wave of violence that swept across southern Trinidad between Sunday evening and Monday morning, leaving six people dead in total. Five of the six victims were killed by gunfire, while one died from stab wounds.
The string of killings began at approximately 7 p.m. Sunday, when a man was fatally stabbed in Fyzabad, which falls under the South Western Police Division. Less than seven hours later, at 1:32 a.m. Monday, the triple shooting unfolded in Corinth, part of the Southern Police Division. The violence wrapped up just before 8 a.m. the same day, when two more people were killed in a double homicide in Penal, another jurisdiction within the South Western Police Division.
The three Corinth victims were found at the home of 42-year-old Martin Harripersad, a father of two who worked as a labourer for the San Fernando City Corporation. Two other men, 25-year-old Clariey Kinfu — a relative of Harripersad — and family friend Anthony Alibocas, whose age and permanent address have not been publicly released, had been staying at Harripersad’s property when the attack occurred. While Harripersad was counted among the dead, preliminary investigations suggest he may not have been the attackers’ intended target. Law enforcement officials say one of the two visiting men is the more likely intended target, though they have not ruled out any potential scenarios regarding motive or target.
Harripersad’s 18-year-old son, who first alerted police to the shooting, told investigators he was out walking the family dog at around 1:23 a.m. when roughly 15 gunshots echoed through the neighborhood. He rushed back to the property immediately, and upon entering the front yard, found Kinfu lying in a pool of blood near the gate. Going further into the home, he discovered his father’s body on the bed, with clear gunshot wounds, and Alibocas dead on the floor, also in a pool of blood.
Investigators from the Ste Madeleine police station, the Region Three Homicide Bureau, and other relevant agencies spent hours on site processing evidence, dusting for fingerprints, collecting bullet casings, and interviewing neighbors and family members for any information that could break the case open.
When reporters from the Express visited the community later that day, heartbroken relatives had gathered near the cordoned-off crime scene, unable to process the sudden loss. Mathew Harripersad, brother of the 42-year-old victim, said his brother had turned his life around years earlier after past run-ins with the law, and had been holding down steady work to support his two children.
“My nephew went out when he heard the shots. He hid, and when he returned home, he realised it was at his home that the shots were fired. My nephew called the police. They shot my brother in his sleep. I see two bullet holes in a door, and blood on the ground,” Mathew recalled. He added, “My brother used to get in trouble in the past, but years now, since he had children, he had changed his life and was working. This is shocking to me. I picked him up on Friday to go to work. On Sunday, he went by our aunt and spoke with her.”
Mathew also noted that his brother often opened his home to people in need, regardless of their past backgrounds, a practice that may have led to the attack. Calling for harsher punishment for violent offenders to stem the island’s rising murder rate, Mathew urged the government to reinstate capital punishment. “The crime situation is bad. People are running all over, killing people. It is like nothing. And the police are not picking up these fellas? They are just walking in and walking out. The Government has to start back hanging people, and these fellas will think twice about killing. Otherwise, they sit in jail for a few years, and come back out and do the same thing,” he said.
One grieving neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, described Martin Harripersad as a close friend and “a good soldier.” “Today is my birthday and I just came from work, to check him, when I heard the news. He was like a brother to me. My brethren dying around me,” he said, his voice raw with grief.
As of Monday, this 13-hour violence surge pushed the country’s overall murder toll to 156 for the year, down slightly from the 163 recorded by the same point in 2023.