Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has said that the shoot­ing death of a Venezue­lan ba­by by the Coast Guard on Sat­ur­day was an ac­ci­dent and added that the Coast Guard mem­bers were car­ry­ing out "rea­son­able and pro­fes­sion­al or­ders un­der in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols and law".

Ba­by Ya Elvis San­toyo and his moth­er Darie Elvis Eliag­nis Sara­bia were il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing T&T on Sat­ur­day night from Tu­cu­pi­ta when they were or­dered to stop by the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard said the ves­sel did not stop and at­tempt­ed to ram their ves­sel when they opened fire.

Dr Row­ley made his com­ment on a Face­book post as he sought to crit­i­cise Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who, on Mon­day night, be­rat­ed the Coast Guard for the shoot­ing of the ba­by.

"IT WAS AN AC­CI­DENT!" Dr Row­ley said us­ing all cap­i­tal let­ters.

"Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pub­licly ac­cused the Coast Guard of­fi­cers of MUR­DER! Ac­cord­ing to her the craft should have been al­lowed to evade the bor­der pa­trol. They should have known that there was an en­dan­gered ba­by on board. We re­gret the ter­ri­ble loss of that in­no­cent in­fant but what should we think of the op­por­tunis­tic, shame­less, at­ten­tion-seek­ing la­dy who is so bereft of any scin­til­la of pa­tri­o­tism," he added.

Dr Row­ley ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion Leader of hav­ing "lim­boed to a new ex­pect­ed dis­gust­ing low".

"We are in­un­dat­ed with guns, am­mu­ni­tion and traf­ficked hu­mans across that bor­der. Our bor­der pa­trol at­tempts to stop a craft that re­fused to com­ply and act­ed ag­gres­sive­ly to­wards law­ful, rea­son­able and pro­fes­sion­al or­ders un­der in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols and law. Our of­fi­cer on pa­trol un­der pro­fes­sion­al or­ders at­tempt­ed to dis­able the craft in the dark­ness of the ocean. The craft could eas­i­ly have been car­ry­ing any car­go of guns, am­mu­ni­tion, killers or any­thing on the move. There was an ac­ci­dent in which un­for­tu­nate­ly a pas­sen­ger child was re­gret­tably killed," he said.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has asked for an 'ex­haus­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion' in­to the shoot­ing and the Unit­ed Na­tions has al­so spo­ken out against it.

On Tues­day, dozens of Venezue­lans protest­ed in front of the Trinidad and To­ba­go em­bassy in Cara­cas, Venezuela, con­demn­ing the shoot­ing as a "mur­der".