Eyewitnesses to the police shooting incident which claimed the lives of five people in Laventille on Thursday night are disputing the police's account of what took place.
They claim that the group of young men, including two teenagers, were unarmed and playing cards when they were confronted by officers at the back of a house.
"They tell Mishack that he like to shoot people in they head and then they do just that. He had his hands up in the air," one witness claimed as he demonstrated how the incident unfolded to Guardian media a short while ago.
Asked how they knew what transpired, the eyewitnesses claimed that several other men were also liming with the group but managed to run away and hide moments before the officers arrived.
"They crawl down there and was playing dead. They hear everything they (the police) say and do," the eyewitness claimed.
According to police reports, around 9.30 pm a group of officers from the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) were allegedly searching for two reputed gang members at a property at Upper Wharton Street, Trou Macaque, when they were allegedly shot at by the men.
Police said there was an exchange of gunfire and five residents, including the two they were looking for, were shot. A police officer was reportedly also shot in his chest during the exchange but the bullet did not pierce his bullet-proof vest. The men were taken to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital where they were pronounced dead on arrival. Police claimed they recovered two firearms at the scene.
The incident sparked an immediate outcry from some members of the community, with some blocking the roads in their area with rubble.
The victims have been identified as 17-year-old Servol student Kadeem Phillip-Williams, 15-year-old Shakeem Francois, Nicholas Barker, Mishack " Nitro" Douglas, 24 and Seandell "Crash" St Clair.
When a news team from Guardian Media visited the crime scene today, several of the minor roads in the community were still partly blocked with smoking heaps of rubble.
Several relatives who volunteered to be interviewed claimed their relatives were wrongfully killed by police.
"I don't know about the others but them teenagers was not in anything. They was just playing cards and smoking a little weed. I not lying for anybody," Phillip-Williams' brother Curty said.