Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

For al­most an hour, a Clax­ton Bay fam­i­ly was ter­rorised by in­trud­ers who beat them and threat­ened to set them on fire dur­ing a home in­va­sion on Tues­day morn­ing.

Po­lice say the 44-year-old home­own­er heard a crash­ing sound around 4.30 am and was con­front­ed by four masked men armed with a firearm and cut­lass. They shoved her back on­to the bed, caus­ing her to hit her 40-year-old hus­band, who was ly­ing down.

Dur­ing the com­mo­tion, her two chil­dren, ages 22 and 18, were jolt­ed from their sleep, and the sus­pects as­sault­ed her son and hus­band.

Her 22-year-old son bore the brunt of the at­tack. He was struck on the head with a gun butt, kicked and punched. He suf­fered a frac­tured skull, a hair­line rib frac­ture, a swollen lung, and par­tial hear­ing loss as a re­sult of the at­tack. Her daugh­ter was flung against a glass ta­ble, shat­ter­ing it.

Un­hap­py with the amount of mon­ey they ini­tial­ly ob­tained, the sus­pects de­mand­ed more. They poured kerosene from a lamp­shade on­to the woman’s two chil­dren and flicked a stove lighter, threat­en­ing to set them on fire.

The in­trud­ers al­so ran­sacked the house and the fam­i­ly’s ve­hi­cle, es­cap­ing with about $3,000, four cell­phones, the ve­hi­cle keys, and a gold chain and ring. They al­so took the cou­ple’s bank cards, sub­se­quent­ly with­draw­ing $3,750.

Po­lice say the sus­pects forced their way in­to the home on Macaulay Road by par­tial­ly break­ing a wood­en back door.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly yes­ter­day, the cou­ple de­clined to ap­pear on cam­era and re­quest­ed that their names be with­held for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons.

The woman, who re­called that her home had been tar­get­ed twice be­fore 2022, said she begged the in­trud­ers not to harm them.

“I went down on my knees and told them that this is all the mon­ey we have. They said, ‘Okay, well, we have to light them up.’ They took the two shade lamps, poured kerosene on the two chil­dren, and said they were go­ing to set them on fire. But the lighter wasn’t work­ing.”

She be­lieves they were tar­get­ed be­cause of their busi­ness, a restau­rant and bar.

“They said they didn’t mean to do what ‘we do,’ but they have to live too,” she re­called.

Com­plain­ing about the wors­en­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, her hus­band said, “I will con­tin­ue with the busi­ness, but some­thing more has to be done by the Gov­ern­ment. The gov­ern­ment has changed, but the crime sit­u­a­tion has not.”

The cou­ple’s son called for an ex­pe­dit­ed process to al­low law-abid­ing busi­ness own­ers to ob­tain firearm li­cences.