The staff at the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain are mourn­ing the loss of a naval of­fi­cer, who re­port­ed­ly died by sui­cide on Thurs­day night.

While the iden­ti­ty of the of­fi­cer as well as the cir­cum­stances re­mained un­known up to yes­ter­day, se­nior lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cials said they were aware of an in­ci­dent at an apart­ment in St Clair.

The in­ci­dent re­port­ed­ly oc­curred on US soil in T&T and ac­cord­ing to the prin­ci­ple of in­ter­na­tion­al law, diplo­mat­ic im­mu­ni­ty grants for­eign diplo­mats le­gal pro­tec­tion from the ju­ris­dic­tion of the host coun­try.

A se­nior of­fi­cial with­in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion con­firmed, “We are aware that some­thing hap­pened but we have no in­for­ma­tion.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out the US Chargé d’Af­faires, Dr Jenifer Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz, who said, “The US Em­bassy com­mu­ni­ty is mourn­ing the death of a col­league. We are deeply grate­ful for the con­stant and car­ing sup­port of the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We re­spect­ful­ly ask every­one to hon­or the pri­va­cy of our col­league’s fam­i­ly and the em­bassy com­mu­ni­ty at this dif­fi­cult time.”

Sev­er­al calls and mes­sages to For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Sean Sobers went unan­swered yes­ter­day.