A brutal early-morning attack left a pregnant woman hospitalized in critical condition on Thursday, after a man she personally knew stabbed and cut her 15 times inside her second-floor apartment in the Mt Lambert neighborhood, according to local law enforcement and witness accounts.
Following the assault, the 31-year-old suspect, identified by police sources as a security officer assigned to the Customs and Excise Division at Port of Spain, locked himself inside the apartment and attempted to die by suicide. Police were able to detain him before he could succeed, and he remained in police custody overnight as investigators carried out questioning.
Neighbors in the apartment complex described the chaotic scene that unfolded shortly after 8 a.m. One resident, who spoke to local outlet the Express on condition of anonymity, said she first noticed something wrong when loud screams cut through the morning quiet. “I turned down my television and all I could hear was screaming, over and over,” she recalled. “When I peered out my window, I saw a woman running down the apartment stairs. I’d already heard she was pregnant, and that he had stabbed her multiple times.”
The witness added that the injured woman was clutching her abdomen heavily as blood seeped from her wounds. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairwell, she was able to take shelter in a ground-floor apartment occupied by an off-duty police officer. The attacker chased her down the stairs before retreating back to the upper floor, where neighbors heard him shouting demands for her to return to the original apartment.
Word of the attack spread quickly through the complex, and within minutes most residents had stepped outside their homes to observe the unfolding emergency. Someone contacted the Barataria Police Station, and three police vehicles were dispatched to the scene within a short response window.
Officers immediately prioritized getting the injured woman to care, transporting her to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope. As of Thursday night, medical teams reported her condition remained stable but critical. The victim’s family has declined to release her name to the public, with one relative noting she has always been an intensely private person.
While first responders tended to the victim, negotiators on scene attempted to convince the suspect to exit the locked apartment, but he refused all repeated requests to surrender. Officers ultimately used a crowbar to force entry into the unit, where they found the man mid-attempt to take his own life. They took him into custody immediately and transferred him to the Barataria Police Station for ongoing interrogation as of Thursday night.