Sascha Wil­son

At just 21 years old Damion Black­well had a promis­ing fu­ture. He was work­ing as a med­ical or­der­ly, study­ing to be­come an elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer and build­ing his home.

How­ev­er, all that end­ed sud­den­ly when he was shot and killed at his Sixth Com­pa­ny Vil­lage, Princes Town, home on Mon­day night.

Black­well, son of a homi­cide de­tec­tive, died on the floor of his home in the pres­ence of his fa­ther, Anslem Black­well.

His cold-blood­ed mur­der has left his rel­a­tives baf­fled and bro­ken­heart­ed. His un­cle, Collin David, de­scribed him as a saint.

Black­well, who was em­ployed at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA, had worked a 6 am to 2 pm shift on Mon­day and re­turned home. He de­cid­ed to wash his car, a bur­gundy Almera. His fa­ther was at home when he saw him run­ning in­to the house fol­lowed by a man wear­ing a white jer­sey and or­ange re­flec­tor vest.

The sus­pect fired sev­er­al shots at Black­well, hit­ting him in the head and arm, be­fore run­ning off. Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered three 9 mm pro­jec­tiles and 13 9 mm spent shells at the house.

While in­ves­ti­ga­tors are on­go­ing, a se­nior of­fi­cer said there was no con­nec­tion be­tween his mur­der and his moth­er’s job. His moth­er, WPC Rav­el­lo, is at­tached to the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion 3. They be­lieve he was tar­get­ed as a re­sult of a dis­pute. No fur­ther de­tails were pro­vid­ed.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed his home yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives were still try­ing to un­der­stand what hap­pened.

Black­well, the old­er of two chil­dren, lived with his fa­ther who was al­so em­ployed as a med­ical or­der­ly with the SWRHA. Black­well was a Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) stu­dent and start­ed work­ing as an or­der­ly just a few months ago

De­scrib­ing his nephew as an am­bi­tious young man, Collin David said the fam­i­ly was trau­ma­tised and “try­ing to cope” with Black­well’s death.

“He had a lot of dreams and goals and every­thing just get cut short. Every­body does want to say that their rel­a­tive was a good boy but it don’t have a per­son on this world who could say any­thing neg­a­tive about my nephew. He was a walk­ing saint. He don’t drink. He don’t smoke, hard­ly eat meat.”

David said Black­well was not in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. Point­ing to a struc­ture un­der con­struc­tion next door, he said Black­well was build­ing his home and want­ed to trav­el aboard.

“Every­body knows him as one of the most re­spectable guys to come out of the area here. We don’t have any clue as to what could have caused this ac­tion. Even if he and some­body had some­thing we don’t know but to deal with him so se­vere be­cause he was not a vi­o­lent type of fel­la. He don’t like al­ter­ca­tion. He al­ways to him­self,” David said.

Com­ment­ing on the crime sit­u­a­tion, he added: “It does not af­fect you un­til it reach­es home. You see it on Face­book, you see it on the pa­pers all the time and you don’t re­al­ly pay much mind to it un­til it reach home.”

Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion 3 are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.