A Trinidadian family is grappling with unfathomable grief after becoming the victim of a second horrific tragedy, when 17-year-old Tristan Stephen was found murdered, just over a year after his older brother was killed in the same community.
Stephen, a resident of Blake Avenue, Damarie Hill in Guaico, Sangre Grande, was first reported missing by his family last Friday when he failed to return home as expected. Local police were alerted immediately, and the volunteer Hunters Search and Rescue Team, under the leadership of Vallance Rambarath, also joined the intensive search effort that unfolded across the weekend.
The search wrapped up just after midday Sunday at Turure cattle farm, but the discovery of Stephen’s body came an hour later, when relatives conducting their own search found the teen’s remains and contacted police. According to official reports, officers led by Acting Corporal Kallicharan responded to the tip around 1:10 p.m., meeting family members at a gravel road across from Malco Lane, Blake Avenue Extension. Relatives guided officers roughly 210 meters from the road to the site where the body was located.
At the scene, police documented Stephen’s clothing: he wore a red jersey, red shorts layered over black long jeans, and a dark green slipper on his left foot, with his other slipper found roughly 50 feet from the body. A brown t-shirt was pulled over his head and face, and investigators noted visible bloodstains on his chest and head. Three apparent gunshot wounds were recorded: two to the chest and one to the right rib area.
Members of the Homicide Region II unit and the Special Evidence Recovery Unit’s crime scene investigation team were called to the site. Forensic officers processed the scene, documented evidence, and took photographs of both the body and the surrounding area before the remains were removed.
Investigators have not yet established an official motive for the killing, but they have confirmed a key detail: last month, Stephen had a disagreement with a person he knew, and that individual reportedly threatened the teen prior to his death.
In an interview with the *Express*, Stephen’s mother shared her family’s anguish, saying she knows her son would never have gone to that isolated area alone at night because he had a well-known fear of the dark. “My son is afraid of the dark, so we knew when he didn’t come home somebody went with him,” she said.
She remembered her son as a loving, well-loved young man who grew up in the small community of Damarie Hill, when the area had only a handful of homes. “When the community got bigger, he was the baby of the avenue… So he was everybody’s baby. Everybody loved him,” she said.
Stephen was a student at Johnson Finishing School, and had already begun looking forward to starting full-time work. His mother said she occasionally let him help with construction and yard work alongside other local young men, despite her efforts to keep him close to home at 17, because he was eager to earn his own money.
She also opened up about how the 2023 murder of Stephen’s older brother, 20-year-old Stephon Saroopsingh, forever changed her son’s life. After Stephon was shot and killed just a short walk from the family’s home last March, other young people in the community taunted Stephen about his brother’s death, bullying him and saying his brother’s killing was deserved. This constant harassment led to Stephen getting into repeated fights, and ultimately the family pulled him out of school.
Now, the family is forced to cope with the loss of a second child to gun violence. “This is the second son I’ve lost,” Stephen’s mother said quietly. “We just trying to hold on.”
She also criticized local authorities for unnecessary delays in processing the case, saying the family encountered significant barriers moving Stephen’s body to the Forensic Science Centre for official identification, after initial attempts to reach the responsible agency went unanswered.
For the family, the killing remains a senseless, unexplainable tragedy. Stephen had never been arrested, was not known to police, and his mother says there is no obvious reason why anyone would target her son. “The child died for nothing,” she said. “I can’t say what the motive is.”
Stephen is survived by two older sisters, who are also struggling to process their younger brother’s sudden death. Despite the overwhelming pain, the mother says the family is clinging to each other to get through this: “All we doing is holding up.”