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Saturday, July 26, 2025

2015 prison escape revisited: 3 escaped, 3 dead, still no answers a decade later

by

Shane Superville
4 days ago
20250720

Ten years ago, gun­fire in­side the Port-of-Spain prison sent shock­waves through the cap­i­tal. Three in­mates armed with two pis­tols and a grenade shot their way out of cus­tody in broad day­light—killing a po­lice of­fi­cer and wound­ing oth­ers in what re­mains one of the most vi­o­lent and mys­te­ri­ous prison breaks in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry.

The in­ci­dent led to the deaths of two in­mates, Al­lan “Scan­ny” Mar­tin and Has­san Atwell, the mur­der of po­lice­man PC Sher­man May­nard and pan­ic that en­gulfed a city for weeks.

The lone sur­viv­ing es­capee, Christo­pher “Mon­ster” Sel­by, sur­ren­dered to po­lice days lat­er and has since been re­turned to the Port-of-Spain Re­mand Yard where he re­mains to this day.

Now, a decade lat­er, the threat once again comes from with­in.

In the ear­ly hours of Fri­day morn­ing, a num­ber of in­mates were qui­et­ly re­lo­cat­ed from the Arou­ca and Port-of-Spain pris­ons—part of a wider se­cu­ri­ty sweep un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

Ac­cord­ing to in­tel­li­gence sources, the ac­tion was trig­gered by an alarm­ing rev­e­la­tion: the resur­gence of a prison-based crim­i­nal syn­di­cate al­leged­ly plot­ting at­tacks on state of­fi­cials.

But even as au­thor­i­ties move to dis­rupt this lat­est threat, they have yet to ful­ly ex­plain the last one.

Though it was heav­i­ly spec­u­lat­ed that the trio re­ceived the weapons from prison of­fi­cers, this was nev­er con­clu­sive­ly proven de­spite mul­ti­ple in­ves­ti­ga­tions, tri­bunal hear­ings, and promis­es of jus­tice.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the par­al­lel the­o­ry that uniden­ti­fied civil­ian vis­i­tors in the prison’s vis­it­ing room sup­plied the weapons al­so re­mains un­proven.

No one has ever been charged for smug­gling the weapons. No prison of­fi­cers were ar­rest­ed. No pub­lic clo­sure.

How three in­mates in 2015 man­aged to ob­tain mil­i­tary-grade weapons in­side a high-se­cu­ri­ty prison re­mains of­fi­cial­ly un­solved.

While the mys­tery of the last prison es­cape still hangs heavy over T&T—a new cri­sis looms.

Chaos erupt­ed in Port-of-Spain ten years ago when a dra­mat­ic prison break left three peo­ple dead, one wound­ed, and the na­tion reel­ing. A decade lat­er, the mys­tery re­mains un­solved.

To this day, there’s no clear ac­count of how three in­mates got their hands on two pis­tols and a hand grenade in­side the prison walls. No charges. No res­o­lu­tion. The mat­ter re­mains on record as un­solved be­cause it is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math, then-DCP Crime and Op­er­a­tions Glenn Hack­ett was ap­point­ed to lead the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Hack­ett in June for com­ment and sent ques­tions to him via What­sApp.

He said he spoke with the cur­rent DCP in charge of In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, who ad­vised him that the mat­ter is still un­der “ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion”, to date, with sus­pects ex­pect­ed to be charged “im­mi­nent­ly”.

In re­sponse, Hack­ett said, “It is giv­en the to­tal­i­ty of the cir­cum­stances that I must re­gret­ful­ly de­cline the in­ter­view. My pro­found apolo­gies.”

Since Jan­u­ary 22, Guardian Me­dia has been seek­ing an up­date from the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit on the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. A TTPS spokesper­son ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the ques­tions, but de­spite re­peat­ed fol­low-ups, no re­spons­es were pro­vid­ed as of Ju­ly 18.

Among the ques­tions posed were: how the in­mates ob­tained the weapons used in the es­cape; why no prison of­fi­cers have been ar­rest­ed or charged in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent; and whether a cer­tain “high-pro­file” in­mate was in­volved.

When asked if the prison ser­vice’s probe re­vealed how the in­mates re­ceived the guns, a sim­i­lar re­sponse was re­ceived from Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe via email ear­li­er this month.

“While the specifics of how and when the weapons en­tered the prison have not been ful­ly con­firmed, there have been leads as to how it was fa­cil­i­tat­ed. Be­cause this mat­ter speaks to crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty, I am wary to place this in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic space for ob­vi­ous rea­sons.”

In the years fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, the qual­i­ty of the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion has come un­der scruti­ny—par­tic­u­lar­ly as some in­di­vid­u­als con­nect­ed to the mat­ter have claimed they were nev­er in­ter­viewed by of­fi­cers.

De­spite these con­cerns, re­tired Prison Com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan, who led the prison ser­vice’s in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the es­cape, main­tains that a com­pre­hen­sive in­quiry was con­duct­ed on their end.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er this month, Pul­chan, who was an As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons in charge of Op­er­a­tions at the time of the es­cape, de­scribed the lack of clar­i­ty a decade lat­er as “un­for­tu­nate”.

Pul­chan’s work on the probe led to the sus­pen­sion of three prison of­fi­cers: Lancelot Duntin, Mervyn Pierre, and Wilbert Lovell.

Duntin and Pierre were ac­cused of fail­ing to act prompt­ly and de­ci­sive­ly on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived about the es­cape, while Lovell was charged with “fail­ing to con­duct him­self in a man­ner so as not to bring dis­cred­it to the rep­u­ta­tion of the Prison Ser­vice when hav­ing re­ceived in­for­ma­tion”.

Through­out the tri­bunal, the men main­tained their in­no­cence and even ac­cused the prison ser­vice’s lead­er­ship at the time of treat­ing them as scape­goats. The mat­ter against them was dis­con­tin­ued in 2020.

Asked about the of­fi­cers’ claims of be­ing per­se­cut­ed with­out ev­i­dence or just cause, Pul­chan main­tained that he did what was re­quired as an in­ves­ti­ga­tor.

“They pro­vid­ed state­ments, the state­ments were al­so is­sued to the ser­vice com­mis­sion, and the ser­vice com­mis­sion found no one guilty. There’s noth­ing much I can say be­yond that.”

But for Lancelot Duntin, one of the prison of­fi­cers who was ac­cused, the mat­ter isn’t as straight­for­ward.

Duntin said that even af­ter the case was dis­con­tin­ued, his rep­u­ta­tion has nev­er ful­ly re­cov­ered from be­ing named among the ac­cused of­fi­cers.

Al­though he was nev­er charged with di­rect­ly aid­ing the es­capees, Duntin said this has not pre­vent­ed some peo­ple from draw­ing their own con­clu­sions about him.

“That is a stain on my name, and the same en­thu­si­asm they had to an­nounce I was sus­pend­ed, where was the en­thu­si­asm to in­form the pub­lic when I was ex­on­er­at­ed? They took half of my salary when I was on sus­pen­sion, and men­tal­ly my head was all over the place.”

To this day, he in­sists that he and his fel­low of­fi­cers were sus­pend­ed mere­ly to ap­pease a pub­lic still un­set­tled by the se­cu­ri­ty breach at such a high-risk fa­cil­i­ty.

Will the truth ever

be re­vealed?

Ten years is a long time for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of such high pub­lic in­ter­est to yield no fur­ther an­swers.

De­spite re­peat­ed as­sur­ances that in­quiries are on­go­ing, there is still no guar­an­tee that the truth about how the in­mates ac­cessed weapons will ever come to light.

When Guardian Me­dia asked Pul­chan whether he be­lieved the truth would ever be re­vealed—or if any­one would be held ac­count­able for arm­ing the in­mates—he could not say.

“I can tell you that dur­ing that in­ves­ti­ga­tion, every sin­gle per­son in­volved in that mat­ter was in­ves­ti­gat­ed thor­ough­ly, and the ev­i­dence pro­vid­ed. Whether new ev­i­dence will sur­face is yet to be seen and yet to be known.”

But af­ter a decade wait­ing, Lancelot Duntin isn’t very hope­ful that any­thing tan­gi­ble will emerge from the in­ci­dent.

He be­lieves the truth be­hind the es­cape re­mains elu­sive—not be­cause it’s un­know­able, but be­cause re­veal­ing it may not serve the in­ter­ests of cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als.

“The State seemed not to care about those per­sons who worked be­hind prison walls then and now. A ques­tion as ba­sic as who made the al­le­ga­tions against us that led to our sus­pen­sion, we have nev­er known to this day.”

Duntin, who was charged with fail­ing to act de­ci­sive­ly, claimed that he was nev­er ques­tioned about the weapons even in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the es­cape.

“This was a gun used to kill (a po­lice­man), but no­body was ask­ing how a gun reached the state prison. It came by boat, maybe by a sub­ma­rine, maybe by a he­li­copter, maybe by a drone, maybe by a prison of­fi­cer, maybe by a vis­i­tor. No­body knows.”

Air of mys­tery

But the air of mys­tery that con­tin­ues to shroud even the most ba­sic ques­tions about the es­cape is part of a larg­er prob­lem in T&T’s sys­tems, ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Ger­ard Gor­don.

In an in­ter­view ear­li­er this year, Gor­don said he was not hope­ful that the truth would be re­vealed.

“It seems that in our so­ci­ety, the truth doesn’t re­al­ly mat­ter. The peo­ple who have to do these in­ves­ti­ga­tions ... no­body is pres­sur­ing them to get an­swers. No­body feels pres­sured, and it goes all around to so­ci­ety, that’s why we have peo­ple sit down in a hold­ing cell for 15 and 16 years await­ing mat­ters.”

In the wake of the prison es­cape, Gor­don said the im­age of the prison ser­vice and its of­fi­cers suf­fered, as the se­cu­ri­ty breach oc­curred un­der their watch—prompt­ing spec­u­la­tion that cor­rupt el­e­ments may have been in­volved.

It’s a mat­ter that con­tin­ues to haunt many with­in the ser­vice, and the unan­swered ques­tions sur­round­ing the es­cape still weigh heav­i­ly on him.

“At which point ex­act­ly did they get the firearms? Did they walk out of the di­vi­sion with their firearms, and even if they did, were they searched? Did the of­fi­cers search them when they got out? There are so many ques­tions, and I don’t know what kind of in­ves­ti­ga­tion was done. Do we re­al­ly want to find out, or what do we want to find out?”

But even if the truth of how the es­capees got ac­cess to guns is re­vealed, Gor­don isn’t op­ti­mistic that such in­for­ma­tion would be enough to prompt changes in the sys­tems and in­fra­struc­ture of the prison ser­vice.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, who vis­it­ed the scene of the es­cape that af­ter­noon, said the lack of an­swers a decade lat­er was not on­ly un­com­fort­able but “nau­se­at­ing” for him as the mat­ter re­mained un­re­solved.

“Don’t say it’s still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion, be­cause that is re­al­ly kick­ing a can down the road for fail­ures to prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gate or find facts. You can’t say there was not suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence or there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to do some­thing; it’s left open, and we hear too much of these al­le­ga­tions and in­ves­ti­ga­tions go­ing on for years with­out clo­sure.

“There must come a mo­ment when you say, ‘Look, I’ve ex­haust­ed all op­por­tu­ni­ty.’ What more op­por­tu­ni­ty could there be af­ter ten years, and a file is still open?”

While sev­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions were un­der­way at the time, Ra­mad­har said he did not have over­sight or any su­per­vi­so­ry au­thor­i­ty for any of the mat­ters.

When asked if he felt the truth of how the in­mates got ac­cess to the weapons would ever be re­vealed, Ra­mad­har said he was un­sure.

“Some­body or some per­sons know. I can on­ly hope, in the high­est lev­el of op­ti­mism, that that may come at some point in time. The re­al­i­ty af­ter ten years in my view is dim, and there­fore we have an open wound that a law­man lost his life in ser­vice of this na­tion with­out an an­swer as to who was re­spon­si­ble.”


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