Af­ter open­ing fire on a group of men in Gon­za­les last night, gun­men rushed in­to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where one of the vic­tims was be­ing tak­en for treat­ment and con­tin­ued shoot­ing to en­sure that he did not sur­vive.

The brazen act re­sult­ed in eight peo­ple be­ing shot, four of whom died.

The in­ci­dent be­gan just be­fore 8 pm Sun­day, with Gon­za­les res­i­dents re­port­ing that a ve­hi­cle pulled up in the area and men dressed in po­lice out­fits emerged.

They con­front­ed the group of men and fired sev­er­al shots.

Three men, ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, died at the scene.

Two of them have been iden­ti­fied as Jonathan Ar­joon and Jadon Reyes. 

Po­lice say a fourth vic­tim, Kevin King, was tak­en to hos­pi­tal by rel­a­tives. How­ev­er, as they at­tempt­ed to take him in­to the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment, the gun­men, who had fol­lowed them, opened fire on King again.

He al­so suc­cumbed to his in­juries.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Rishi Singh told the me­dia ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing that a fi­nan­cial re­ward will be of­fered for in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to this dead­ly shoot­ing.  

Hinds laments gang killings

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, who vis­it­ed the crime scenes last night, ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the prob­lem of gangs in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Min­is­ter Hinds said he was “dis­turbed” by this shoot­ing in­ci­dent and quot­ed sta­tis­tics that showed 65 per cent of the mur­ders in the coun­try be­ing gang-re­lat­ed. 

He said this was a re­al­i­ty even with the pres­ence of an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion.

Min­is­ter Hinds called on mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ties where these gangs are preva­lent to speak up and pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice.