The usu­al­ly sub­dued res­i­den­tial St Ann’s com­mu­ni­ty re­coiled in hor­ror on Monday af­ter a would-be rob­ber shot dead a res­i­dent who wres­tled with a gun­man who at­tempt­ed to storm a house.

Res­i­dents said the mur­der of Math­ew De Sil­va was part of a trend of vi­o­lent crime af­fect­ing the once safe com­mu­ni­ty lo­cat­ed a short dis­tance away from the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence.

De Sil­va, 36, was at the home of a friend along Hut­ton Road play­ing a game of cards when an armed in­trud­er walked in­to the house af­ter his friend’s girl­friend ar­rived around 2 am.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, De Sil­va, who was con­front­ed by the armed man, at­tempt­ed to over­pow­er him. Dur­ing the strug­gle, the gun went off and De Sil­va was shot sev­er­al times.

The gun­man then fled the scene along with two oth­er ac­com­plices who were out­side the house via a drain lo­cat­ed to the back of the prop­er­ties lo­cat­ed along Hut­ton Road.

De Sil­va was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead.

De Sil­va’s wife, Megan, who was over­whelmed with grief, de­scribed her hus­band as her hero.

“He sac­ri­ficed his life to save our two friends. He is my hero.”

She said in re­cent times crime has in­creased in terms of rob­beries and home in­va­sions.

“There has been a lot of in­ci­dents. Re­cent­ly right up the street two homes were cleaned out. It is scary. No­body wants to walk around. It’s re­al­ly bad and like peo­ple don’t care. This is sad that it takes some­thing like this for peo­ple to re­alise that is go­ing on. Peo­ple suf­fer­ing.”

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Carl Al­fon­so, who lives in the dis­trict, said crime had bal­looned in the re­cent months.

He sug­gest­ed that “out­siders” were gain­ing ac­cess to hous­es, via an on­go­ing box drain project in an ad­ja­cent street.

“It has got­ten out of hand. In re­cent months we have no­ticed an up­surge and we don’t know ex­act­ly why.”

Al­fon­so, a for­mer Chief of De­fence Staff, said peo­ple need to change their lifestyle “for ob­vi­ous rea­sons” and “step up on se­cu­ri­ty aware­ness.”

He said that while there was no res­i­dents’ as­so­ci­a­tion in the area he had re­ceived many calls from con­cerned cit­i­zens on the heels of this lat­est mur­der. He said the time is right for the form­ing of a neigh­bour­hood watch group.

“We can­not blame the po­lice...Gary and his boys. We all have to help them. We have to be our broth­er’s keep­er and do some­thing so if we see some­thing strange or some­one strange we can call some­one.”

Al­fon­so said res­i­dents are even seek­ing a town meet­ing with their par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive— Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young.

Young in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse ex­tend­ed his deep­est con­do­lences to the De Sil­va fam­i­ly.

“The loss of every sin­gle life of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens is trag­ic and trau­mat­ic. I have been push­ing hard to fight the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in our so­ci­ety. Once again, the loss of an in­no­cent life was due to the use of an il­le­gal firearm or firearms. My deep­est and sin­cer­est sym­pa­thy and con­do­lences go out to Mr De Sil­va’s fam­i­ly. My thoughts and prayers are with them. We will not rest in our fight against crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

St Ann’s/Cas­cade/Mon Re­pos West Coun­cil­lor Sher­win Jones said he in­tends to meet with the sergeant in charge of the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and the in­creased rob­beries in the area.

“I in­tend to ask for in­creased po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty 24/7 de­spite that a lot of road­blocks and pa­trols take place fre­quent­ly...Just last week there was a ma­jor road­block ex­er­cise not too far from Hut­ton Road at Queen’s Hall (which is near the of­fi­cial res­i­dence of the Prime Min­is­ter and al­so the Pres­i­dent’s House).”

Asked if the drain the killer used in the es­cape could be blocked off, Jones said it could not be­cause it aid­ed in chan­nel­ing ex­cess wa­ter straight from the area to the St Ann’s Riv­er.

On Sep­tem­ber 2, 2017, 80-year-old Dr Claire Broad­bridge was killed at her Fondes Aman­des, St Ann’s home. A man and his com­mon-law wife were charged with her mur­der.

Broad­bridge was found bound, stabbed re­peat­ed­ly and her throat slashed at her home. Af­ter killing her, her at­tack­er/s at­tempt­ed to torch her home by set­ting fire to fur­ni­ture, which alert­ed neigh­bours who called the Fire Ser­vice. The fire of­fi­cials found the woman’s life­less body in her bed­room.

The skate­board­ing com­mu­ni­ty al­so sent out deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly. Megan said her hus­band was a friend to the com­mu­ni­ty and well re­spect­ed.