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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

MSP locked down again after murder of inmate

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29 days ago
20250408
Prison officers and Guard and Emergency personnel outside the Maximum Security Prison in Arouca on Saturday, after a gang clash left one inmate dead.

Prison officers and Guard and Emergency personnel outside the Maximum Security Prison in Arouca on Saturday, after a gang clash left one inmate dead.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) at Gold­en Grove Road, Pi­ar­co, was locked down yes­ter­day, as se­cu­ri­ty search­es con­tin­ued at all prison fa­cil­i­ties fol­low­ing an out­break of vi­o­lence on Sat­ur­day which left one in­mate dead and sev­er­al oth­ers wound­ed.

In­mate Brent Bap­tiste was stabbed to death dur­ing a clash be­tween ri­val gangs, who used im­pro­vised weapons dur­ing their scuf­fles.

On Sat­ur­day, act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe con­firmed se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols had been re­viewed and re­in­forced across all cor­rec­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.

Along with the MSP, the Prison Ser­vice is re­spon­si­ble for the Port-of-Spain Prison, the Car­rera Con­vict Prison, the Women’s Prison, the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre and the To­ba­go Con­vict De­pot.

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin said a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the vi­o­lence.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for an up­date on claims that prison au­thor­i­ties had been at­tempt­ing to sep­a­rate mem­bers of war­ring gangs with­in the prison walls to avoid fur­ther out­breaks of vi­o­lence, a se­nior prison of­fi­cial said, “You need space to sep­a­rate peo­ple. We have no space.”

Mean­while, in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to the dis­cov­ery of a loaded pis­tol in a prison block at the MSP on April 2.

Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, law en­force­ment agents con­duct­ed a thor­ough search be­tween noon and 7.30 pm last Wednes­day and re­cov­ered the gun and sev­en rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion, along with sev­en cell phones and ten im­pro­vised weapons.

A sim­i­lar search was car­ried out at the Port-of-Spain Prison on April 3, where sev­er­al cell­phones and a num­ber of im­pro­vised weapons and il­le­gal drugs were found.


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