Mark Bas­sant

One man was shot dead and three oth­ers crit­i­cal­ly in­jured af­ter gun­men opened fire on the men while they were seat­ed in a car in Mar­aval last night.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that the shoot­ing hap­pened short­ly af­ter 8.30 pm a short dis­tance away from the Mar­aval Po­lice Sta­tion.

Po­lice said that a ve­hi­cle with the gun­men pulled up along­side a car parked on top of the hill along Moral­do Street. Gun­men fired sev­er­al shots at the car, hit­ting all four oc­cu­pants in­side sev­er­al times about their bod­ies. The gun­men then fled the scene in their ve­hi­cle.

Guardian Me­dia ar­rived on the scene ap­prox­i­mate­ly half an hour af­ter the shoot­ing as crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors searched for clues.

Po­lice said the dri­ver of the ve­hi­cle, who was yet to be iden­ti­fied, died in the ve­hi­cle. Three uniden­ti­fied Span­ish-speak­ing men who were al­so wound­ed in­side the ve­hi­cle lat­er ran down the hill to­wards Sad­dle Road. One of the in­jured men fell down and lay on the ground for some time, call­ing out for help be­fore res­i­dents rushed to his as­sis­tance. A trail of blood­stains was left be­hind on the pave­ment as ev­i­dence of the at­tack af­ter­wards.

With­in min­utes of the shoot­ing sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers al­so ar­rived on the scene and took the in­jured men to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment.

Po­lice of­fi­cers im­me­di­ate­ly locked down the area and stopped and search sev­er­al mo­torists near the area fol­low­ing the shoot­ing.

“One of the men was bad­ly in­jured and he may not make it,” one of­fi­cer told Guardian Me­dia, not­ing the toll from the at­tack may go up to two be­fore the night was out.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are al­so hop­ing to cap­ture fur­ther clues by check­ing the CCTV cam­eras mount­ed on an elec­tri­cal pole along Sad­dle Road, di­rect­ly op­po­site Moral­do Street.

Po­lice be­lieve the shoot­ing may be gang-re­lat­ed.