Giv­en the high pub­lic in­ter­est and var­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties for a mo­tive, sev­er­al high-pro­file po­lice units have been in­struct­ed to as­sist the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mur­der of spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor.

Gun vi­o­lence in T&T has reached cri­sis lev­els. Be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and De­cem­ber 26 last year, 614 peo­ple were killed in 551 shoot­ing in­ci­dents. There have been more than 90 shoot­ing in­ci­dents which re­sult­ed in mul­ti­ple ca­su­al­ties.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood Christo­pher said 126 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed since the State of Emer­gency (SoE) went in­to ef­fect on De­cem­ber 30 and 17 firearms, more than 675 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion, and vary­ing quan­ti­ties of nar­cotics had been seized dur­ing 1,011 search­es.

A re­cent­ly pur­chased stove is be­lieved to be the source of an ex­plo­sion that dam­aged a small eatery at New City Mall in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

In 2024, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s lead­er­ship chal­lenges cul­mi­nat­ed in a State of Emer­gency (SoE) be­ing de­clared two days be­fore the start of the new year.

For more than a decade, res­i­dents of In­dars­ingh Dri­ve, Di­a­mond Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, have been liv­ing in fear as land­slips have caused dev­as­ta­tion in their com­mu­ni­ty.

The killing of a 15-year-old boy has left To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly Gold­en Lane res­i­dents, griev­ing and con­cerned about ris­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land.

A busi­ness cham­ber has ex­pressed con­cern that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that he is step­ping down with­out a suc­ces­sor in place and with gen­er­al elec­tions around the cor­ner. The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) be­lieves this could put doubt in the minds of in­vestors.

Sean Roach is step­ping down from his po­si­tion as chair­man of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT).

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day as­sured that his de­par­ture from pol­i­tics will not leave a lead­er­ship vac­u­um in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) or the gov­ern­ment.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive is as­sur­ing that a process of seam­less suc­ces­sion, guid­ed by its or­ga­ni­za­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion will be at play fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter and Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley to step down by the end of the term.

To­ba­go has record­ed its first mur­der for the year, with the vic­tim iden­ti­fied as 15-year-old Beris Joseph, a fourth-form stu­dent of Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School.