分类： society

A wave of persistent brutal violence has shaken Trinidad and Tobago, with at least 30 people killed in targeted attacks, shootings and fatal assaults across the nation in the five weeks since the government imposed a new state of emergency (SoE) to curb rising crime, Deputy Police Commissioner Suzette Martin confirmed last Friday. The chilling death toll averages out to roughly one killing per day since the SoE took effect on March 3, defying official pledges to restore public safety.

Among the victims are people from all walks of life, including high-profile figures, children, working professionals and even an elite athlete. One of the most high-profile killings took place on March 13, when controversial real estate developer Danny Guerra was ambushed and gunned down by two masked gunmen in a white car as he returned to his vehicle outside his Sangre Grande business premises. Just one week later, on March 17, 28-year-old female cricketer Rashme Deoajit was found stabbed to death with her throat slit in her Cedros home; a man known to the family has since been charged in connection with her murder.

The violence has also claimed the lives of some of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens. On March 31, an 11-month-old toddler, Jayden Sutton, was shot and killed alongside his 25-year-old father Joseph Sutton as the pair slept in their St James home. Police confirmed the father had been a witness to a separate shooting earlier that month and was cooperating with investigators, suggesting the killing was a targeted retaliatory attack. On March 23, three young men – 17-year-old Jordan Cudjoe Burke, 22-year-old Ishmael Matthews, and 21-year-old Roberto Samuel Carlos – were gunned down in a hail of bullets inside a ground-floor bedroom at Burke’s family property in Penal. Burke was the son of deceased local businessman and community activist Cedric Burke. That same day, the beaten body of 20-year-old mentally ill David Ramlakhan was found abandoned in bushes 200 feet from his New Grant home, where he had been left to die.

Other victims include serving soldiers, business owners, and everyday residents going about their daily routines. On March 14, 30-year-old soldier Jaelani Garcia Williams was ambushed and shot dead while approaching his SUV outside a Chaguanas mini-mart; investigators recovered a loaded pistol from Williams’ possession along with multiple spent shell casings from the shooter’s weapons. Four people were killed across separate incidents on March 15 alone, including three men in different shootings across Laventille, and an unidentified man whose decomposing body was found floating in a Sangre Grande pond. Multiple other killings between March and early April have left victims unidentified, as law enforcement struggles to keep pace with the surge in violence.

The ongoing bloodshed directly contradicts assurances delivered by senior government officials when the new SoE was announced. At the time of the declaration, Attorney General John Jeremie stated the government was determined to “never allow this country to deteriorate into the taste of chaos and bloodshed which we met in May 2025 when we took office.” To date, the state of emergency has failed to break the pattern of daily violence that has gripped the nation, leaving communities reeling from a steady stream of deadly attacks.

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.

Senior Superintendent Garvin Henry, the top law enforcement official for Trinidad and Tobago Police Service’s (TTPS) Western Division, has openly confirmed a modest but concerning uptick in homicide cases across the jurisdiction in 2024. In an exclusive interview with the *Sunday Express* conducted last week, Henry stated, “We are seeing an increase, I will admit. The last figures I saw showed a slight increase in murders in the Western Division, and that is of concern to us, and that is a major part of our focus.” Despite acknowledging the upward trend in killings, Henry stressed that local law enforcement cannot reverse this pattern without active collaboration from members of the public.