The si­lence at Heights of Gua­napo in Ari­ma was bro­ken by the sounds of wail­ing and cries from neigh­bours and the fam­i­lies of four sib­lings who were gunned down as they lay in their beds ear­ly yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said Faith Pe­terkin, 10, Ar­i­an­na Pe­terkin, 14, Shane Pe­terkin, 17, and Tiffany Pe­terkin, 19, were asleep in their Grav­el Road Ex­ten­sion, La Re­treat Ex­ten­sion home around 12.25 am when it was stormed by gun­men.

When the shoot­ing end­ed, the Pe­terkin sib­lings were dead and five oth­ers, in­clud­ing a 14-year-old girl, were wound­ed.

Res­i­dents told po­lice a man in a black hood­ie, be­lieved to be one of the gun­men, was lat­er seen run­ning through near­by bush­es.

Po­lice from the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and the am­bu­lance took the Pe­terkins to the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal where they were de­clared dead.

Po­lice from the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit (SERU) vis­it­ed the scene and found sev­en spent 9 mm shells, 13, 7.62 shells, 33, 5.56 shells and a live 9 mm round with TTPS mark­ings.

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived in the com­mu­ni­ty, shak­en rel­a­tives were be­ing con­soled by neigh­bours. The griev­ing rel­a­tives de­clined to speak to me­dia and asked re­porters to leave the prop­er­ty.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al neigh­bours who asked not to be named, said the mur­ders of the chil­dren had im­pact­ed the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty, as they knew them grow­ing up.

“I am dev­as­tat­ed, I have no chil­dren of my own but I still feel it. I am trau­ma­tised, if they could come and kill four chil­dren, who is me?” one res­i­dent said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said she was al­so deeply pained af­ter hear­ing about the mur­ders be­cause she was a par­ent her­self. She said the sound of gun­fire fright­ened her enough to keep her in­side and said she was hes­i­tant to even ven­ture out­doors hours af­ter the at­tack.

“I hear­ing things like gal­vanise rack­ing, I was fright­ened to death be­cause it was on­ly board house we liv­ing in,” she said.

“That is not nice. Those chil­dren that died, we mind them from small. It was nice, sweet chil­dren they killed. I does try to keep away be­cause I have chil­dren. I didn’t even come out to see any­body mov­ing the bod­ies.”

The res­i­dent added that a firmer po­lice re­sponse was need­ed to pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty, de­scrib­ing the mur­ders of the chil­dren as “hor­rif­ic.”

She said a more force­ful ap­proach to find­ing the killers was nec­es­sary, not­ing that the fre­quen­cy of pa­trols was dis­ap­point­ing.

As rel­a­tives of the Pe­terkin sib­lings con­tin­ued to mourn their deaths, work­men, who were build­ing a wall at a prop­er­ty a few feet down the dirt track, con­tin­ued seem­ing­ly undis­turbed and de­clined to speak to re­porters when ap­proached.

Blan­chisseuse/San­ta Rosa coun­cil­lor Roger Moore al­so vis­it­ed the area to of­fer con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly.

Speak­ing with re­porters, Moore said the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty was griev­ing with the fam­i­ly. He said the mur­ders were painful to him as he knew the fam­i­ly.

Moore al­so not­ed that while there were safe­ty con­cerns from res­i­dents, he was con­fi­dent the po­lice could main­tain or­der.

“It’s not usu­al­ly so in­tense with crime but there may be some sit­u­a­tions hap­pen­ing with­in the com­mu­ni­ty. I am cer­tain the TTPS is look­ing in to see what is go­ing on and we have no doubt that safe­ty is re­turned,” he said.

“There will be a sense of fear, four peo­ple mur­dered will cause that, so the com­mu­ni­ty is mourn­ing but I do ask the com­mu­ni­ty to grieve with us.

“It is im­por­tant that we cry and deal with the grief as a com­mu­ni­ty. How­ev­er, I am cer­tain the TTPS and in­sti­tu­tions charged with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to lend as­sis­tance will come out and re­turn some nor­mal­cy.”

Moore said he vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly to of­fer con­do­lences and find out how he could as­sist them through his of­fice.

While Guardian Me­dia re­mained at the scene, sev­er­al ve­hi­cles filled with uni­formed and plain clothes po­lice of­fi­cers from var­i­ous units were seen dri­ving through the dirt tracks to get to the Pe­terkin fam­i­ly home.

Sev­er­al of­fi­cers were al­so seen speak­ing with rel­a­tives and res­i­dents as they con­tin­ued their en­quiries. As the of­fi­cers con­tin­ued their in­ter­views, the sound of loud cry­ing was heard com­ing from the fam­i­ly home in the oth­er­wise qui­et, rur­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Ker­win Fran­cis, of­fered con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and vowed that po­lice would con­tin­ue to main­tain a vis­i­ble pres­ence in their com­mu­ni­ty.

“I want to as­sure those fam­i­ly mem­bers and the wider com­mu­ni­ty of Gua­napo that the po­lice will spare no ef­fort in con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to this mat­ter, us­ing all avail­able re­sources to bring to jus­tice those re­spon­si­ble for this act,” he said.

“To the wider com­mu­ni­ty, I al­so give you the as­sur­ance that the po­lice of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, sup­port­ed by oth­er arms of the po­lice and De­fence Force, will al­so con­tin­ue our 24 hour pa­trols in your com­mu­ni­ty to en­sure that a lev­el of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is main­tained.”

Fran­cis said the in­ci­dent was an ex­am­ple of the ease with which guns were car­ried from one dis­trict to an­oth­er.

De­spite this, he said the po­lice were still work­ing to se­cure com­mu­ni­ties, not­ing that over 480 guns were seized for the year thus far.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, mean­while, Ari­ma MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, who knows the fam­i­ly, said she was dev­as­tat­ed to hear about the mur­ders.

Beck­les-Robin­son, who is at­tend­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York, said it was a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, as she had hoped to vis­it the fam­i­ly in per­son to lend sup­port but was un­able to do so.

Beck­les-Robin­son said she spoke with the moth­er of the mur­der vic­tims and lament­ed the spate of vi­o­lence in T&T.

“I did speak with the moth­er at least to get a sense... she was very dis­tressed, be­cause it’s four out of the five chil­dren that have passed and then there is one that is still crit­i­cal and the oth­ers are al­so fam­i­ly mem­bers... nieces and nephews,” Beck­les-Robin­son said.

“When you are MP for an area and some­thing like that hap­pens, es­pe­cial­ly in that par­tic­u­lar en­vi­ron­ment, that area it is re­al­ly very heart­break­ing,” she said.

“You be­gin to won­der what takes place in the minds of peo­ple, be­cause if you know that area, you must know there are chil­dren you are at­tack­ing. It’s al­most as if... peo­ple like they don’t care. Every­one be­comes col­lat­er­al dam­age.

“For par­ents in par­tic­u­lar, when you have five chil­dren and you lost four in such cru­el cir­cum­stances you can well un­der­stand how painful it can be.”

Beck­les-Robin­son said while it was un­der­stand­able the fam­i­ly would not want to re­main in the house where the mur­ders hap­pened, the rel­a­tives were not ready to dis­cuss al­ter­na­tive liv­ing arrange­ments.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj de­scribed the mur­ders as “heinous” and called on res­i­dents to ral­ly to­geth­er in the fight against crime.

Ma­haraj, who dur­ing his swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny last week vowed to work to cre­ate a safer space for vis­i­tors and res­i­dents of Ari­ma, said he was deeply sad­dened by the mur­ders.

“We want per­sons to feel safe in Ari­ma again. Crime has no place here. Crime is every­body’s busi­ness so we need to stop the blame game and join forces to tack­le this crime scourge.”

Di­rec­tor of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, Shel­don Cyrus, al­so con­demned the mur­ders and lament­ed the re­sults of such vi­o­lence.

He not­ed that mur­ders cre­at­ed fur­ther so­ci­etal prob­lems by dam­ag­ing com­mu­ni­ties and their res­i­dents.

“The fall­out of the war that cit­i­zens are wag­ing against each oth­er is lead­ing to bro­ken fam­i­lies. Chil­dren al­so are forced to grow up with­out their par­ents and rel­a­tives, and par­ents and rel­a­tives are griev­ing the loss of their chil­dren,” Cyrus said in a me­dia re­lease.

“The psy­cho­log­i­cal toll that all this loss and grief takes on our so­ci­ety is wide reach­ing. The im­pact goes even fur­ther, as our chil­dren are now grow­ing in a space where they must be hy­per-vig­i­lant - un­able to play, rest or even sleep peace­ful­ly in their homes.

“Liv­ing with that fear is very dam­ag­ing and will have reper­cus­sions for our chil­dren’s fu­ture.”

Cyrus al­so urged com­mu­ni­ties to ral­ly to­geth­er in an bid to en­sure greater co-op­er­a­tion and pro­tec­tion of chil­dren.

As of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the mur­ders of the Pe­terkin sib­lings brought the mur­der toll to 431 for the year thus far, com­pared to 430 at the same pe­ri­od last year.

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion II are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.