The in­ci­dent in which a prison of­fi­cer was stabbed dur­ing an at­tempt­ed rob­bery in St Au­gus­tine on Thurs­day, has been de­scribed as a crime of op­por­tu­ni­ty and not a tar­get­ed am­bush as pre­vi­ous­ly be­lieved.

Con­firm­ing the 34-year-old man was in a sta­ble con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don yes­ter­day urged the pub­lic to join the au­thor­i­ties in tak­ing back the coun­try from the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

The of­fi­cer, who is as­signed to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca, was ap­proached around 12.15 am as he walked along St Au­gus­tine Cir­cu­lar to his home.

Dur­ing the at­tack, he was robbed of his ser­vice weapon, a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion, and oth­er valu­ables, fol­low­ing which he was struck in the face with a gun and then stabbed in the back be­fore the sus­pects fled in a wait­ing car.

Re­ports claim a sil­ver Nis­san AD Wag­on pulled up along­side the of­fi­cer as he was walk­ing along, and two men got out.

One was armed with a gun while the oth­er had a knife.

The sus­pects re­port­ed­ly or­dered the of­fi­cer to hand over his be­long­ings and when he re­sist­ed, he was at­tacked and beat­en be­fore be­ing in­jured, and left to die at the side of the road.

The ban­dits then grabbed the of­fi­cer’s bag which con­tained his ser­vice weapon, two mag­a­zines, and 30 rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion be­long­ing to the T&T Prison Ser­vice; as well as his wal­let which con­tained $750 in cash, and a Sam­sung S23 smart­phone.

The in­jured of­fi­cer lat­er made his way to the guard booth at the near­by UWI Cam­pus, and was tak­en to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.

He was able to pro­vide law­men with a state­ment be­fore they took him to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, where he was treat­ed and ward­ed.

Wish­ing the of­fi­cer a speedy re­cov­ery yes­ter­day, Gor­don re­mind­ed per­sons, “We con­tin­ue to op­er­ate n a space where the crim­i­nal el­e­ments con­tin­ue to be em­bold­ened in their ef­forts to make T&T un­live­able for the for rest of us.”

In call­ing for per­sons to stand up against this group which was in the mi­nor­i­ty, he said, “What I hope is that we are able to have the sort of push-back that is nec­es­sary to have them change their minds from this life of crime.”

Al­though a prison of­fi­cer was the vic­tim in this in­stance, Gor­don went on, “It was un­for­tu­nate, but the way I see it, it is all of us, all of the cit­i­zens.”

“It is all of the peo­ple who are work­ing hard, try­ing their best to take care of their fam­i­lies. They are do­ing every­thing they could do and they are do­ing all the right things.”

Lament­ing that the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ued to live in a, “Time of un­cer­tain­ty and with that lev­el of anx­i­ety,” he added, “It’s tremen­dous.”

Gor­don un­der­scored, “More than any oth­er time in our his­to­ry, now is the per­fect time for us as cit­i­zens to take back our com­mu­ni­ties.”

“It should not be that we are the ones that are locked up in our homes and afraid to come out and walk at that hour of the night.”

He urged per­sons not to mis­in­ter­pret the sit­u­a­tion as the of­fi­cer had been on his way home from work.

And he added, “Now is as good a time to reignite those neigh­bour­hood watch groups, be each oth­er’s keep­er, and alert one an­oth­er so we can all feel safe once again.”