To­ba­go record­ed its 19th mur­der for the year yes­ter­day, when a Ch­agua­nas woman was killed af­ter gun­men sprayed bul­lets at her while she was at Lam­my Road, Ar­gyle.

Po­lice said Vic­to­ria Aman­da Guer­ra, al­so known as “Dol­ly Boss,” died at the Rox­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal soon af­ter the at­tack.

Of­fi­cers from the near­by Rox­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion were post­ed out­side the hos­pi­tal as a pre­cau­tion while doc­tors tried to save her life, as they feared the gun­men would storm the hos­pi­tal in search of Guer­ra.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors sus­pect the killing was a re­sult of on­go­ing gang war­fare on the is­land. They sus­pect Guer­ra, 32, was a mem­ber of a gang but may not have been the in­tend­ed tar­get.

In­stead, they are work­ing on the the­o­ry that some­one who was with Guer­ra was the fo­cus of the gun­men.

Her killing came two days af­ter a man was shot in Scar­bor­ough and died at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. It is the lat­est in a string of vi­o­lent crimes plagu­ing To­ba­go, which has seen the is­land record its high­est mur­der count in his­to­ry.

As news of the shoot­ing and the of­fi­cers stand­ing guard at the hos­pi­tal spread, there were ru­mours the hos­pi­tal was on lock­down be­cause of a shoot­ing.

How­ev­er, ACP for To­ba­go Col­lis Hazel con­demned the mis­in­for­ma­tion.

“As ACP, we need to en­sure ac­cu­ra­cy and not pan­ic the na­tion. There has been no shoot­ing at the hos­pi­tal that shut it down,” he said.

Crime in To­ba­go has been en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

In May, po­lice of­fi­cers from Trinidad were de­ployed in To­ba­go to deal with the rise in mur­ders and the es­ca­la­tion of gun and gang vi­o­lence. More of­fi­cers were sent to To­ba­go af­ter a meet­ing be­tween Row­ley and Au­gus­tine fol­low­ing the mur­ders of four men in Black Rock in ear­ly Ju­ly. The PM and oth­er of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Christo­pher, al­so an­nounced more CCTV cam­eras and foren­sic re­sources for the is­land.

Ef­forts yes­ter­day to con­tact Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine on this lat­est in­ci­dent and the is­land’s now his­toric mur­der count were fu­tile.