Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

and Mark Bas­sant

Two gun­men dressed in a white suits re­sem­bling those worn by crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors (CSI) walked in­to Ward 3 of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and pumped sev­er­al bul­lets in­to a male pa­tient as he lay in his hos­pi­tal bed last night.

The dead man has been iden­ti­fied by po­lice as a 25-year-old De­jean Bro­ker from Hillview, Laven­tille.

The brazen killing, in­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia, oc­curred around 8.45 pm.

Eye­wit­ness­es said nurs­es and pa­tients scam­pered for cov­er when the gun­men ca­su­al­ly walked up to his vic­tim and opened fire.

One pa­tient on the ward de­scribed the scene as chaot­ic: “I had to throw my­self un­der the bed...there were about ten gun­shots.”

The shak­en pa­tient said nurs­es were cry­ing and oth­er pa­tients were al­so in tears.

The ward, lo­cat­ed on the north­ern side of the hos­pi­tal, ac­com­mo­dates male and fe­male pa­tients of dif­fer­ent ages. It was moved there af­ter the cen­tral block of the hos­pi­tal was bad­ly dam­aged by an earth­quake in Au­gust last year.

Of­fi­cers at­tached to the Port-of-Spain CID and Task Force, as well as of­fi­cers from Homi­cide, re­spond­ed with­in min­utes of the killing.

Po­lice say they are still try­ing to de­ter­mine how the gun­man was able to get in­to the ward af­ter vis­it­ing hours. The vis­it­ing hours for the hos­pi­tal are be­tween 11 am and 1 pm and be­tween 4 pm and 6 pm.

Se­nior po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia that Bro­ker had been ad­mit­ted to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Mon­day with stab wounds from an in­ci­dent in the West­ern Di­vi­sion. The as­sailants es­caped on foot.

A re­lease from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) late last night ad­vised that there will be a con­tin­ued po­lice pres­ence at the hos­pi­tal for the next few days and that of­fi­cers are “ac­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing a shoot­ing in­ci­dent.”

“In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­main very ac­tive,” the re­lease stat­ed.