Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Months af­ter he was re­leased from a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der (PDO) un­der the pre­vi­ous State of Emer­gency (SoE), busi­ness­man and al­leged il­le­gal quar­ry op­er­a­tor Dan­ny Guer­ra was gunned down at his San­gre Grande of­fice yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Po­lice said Guer­ra, 49, was at his busi­ness place at the 3 1/2 mm Guy Trace, North Oropouche Road, and was prepar­ing to leave the site when he got in­to his black Toy­ota Hilux.

How­ev­er, two masked gun­men who were wait­ing in a white Nis­san Ti­i­da near­by got out of that car, walked up to Guer­ra’s ve­hi­cle and shot him sev­er­al times as he sat in the dri­ver’s seat.

Per­sons near­by took Guer­ra to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal in a pri­vate ve­hi­cle, where he was de­clared dead.

Of­fi­cers from var­i­ous units, in­clud­ing the East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and the San­gre Grande CID, were called in and were part of height­ened po­lice ex­er­cis­es to find the sus­pects and se­cure the area. How­ev­er, no one was found up to late last evening.

Speak­ing at the scene, Guer­ra’s un­cle, Charles Guer­ra, said he and oth­ers were shocked to hear about his nephew’s mur­der.

Re­flect­ing on his last con­ver­sa­tion with him at a job­site on Thurs­day, Charles said, “The man was on work yes­ter­day and he was just pass­ing through and watch­ing say­ing ‘Alyuh go­ing good, every­thing go­ing nice, every­thing go­ing sweet.’

“He said, ‘Boy we have re­al work, we go­ing on the To­co Road and then on the Oropouche Road,’ and that was it ... com­ing and hear­ing this now, that is no scene, this is re­al dread­ness.”

Charles said Guer­ra’s moth­er was cur­rent­ly abroad, but sus­pect­ed that she had heard about her son’s mur­der al­ready.

One San­gre Grande res­i­dent who asked not to be named said he did not know what to think about Guer­ra’s mur­der, not­ing that while the sit­u­a­tion was trag­ic, he was al­so aware of Guer­ra’s rep­u­ta­tion as a pur­port­ed un­der­world fig­ure.

Last No­vem­ber, Guer­ra was iden­ti­fied as the leader of an or­gan­ised crime group in­volved in the traf­fick­ing of il­le­gal arms, mon­ey laun­der­ing and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.

The le­gal no­tice for his pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der fur­ther stat­ed that Guer­ra had ac­cess to a cache of high-pow­ered firearms, adding that “the de­tainee and oth­ers in­tend to im­mi­nent­ly ex­e­cute the as­sas­si­na­tion of a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter and to es­ca­late at­tacks against ri­val gangs in pub­lic spaces us­ing high-pow­ered firearms.”

Guer­ra was even­tu­al­ly re­leased on Jan­u­ary 2 from the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa, af­ter his at­tor­ney, Ner­isa Bala, posed a le­gal chal­lenge to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der over his de­ten­tion.

How­ev­er, Guer­ra’s le­gal is­sues be­gan be­fore the SoE, when he was charged in Oc­to­ber 2025 for the un­law­ful pro­cess­ing of ag­gre­gate with­out a li­cence from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and grant­ed $50,000 bail.

Of­fi­cers of the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries. - With re­port­ing by Ralph Ban­warie