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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Two teen escapees killed during Laventille ambush

by

Rhondor Dowlat-Rostant
1578 days ago
20210328

RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Two of the five teenage boys who es­caped from the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty Child Sup­port Cen­tre last week­end were am­bushed and shot dead by two men dressed in po­lice uni­form in Port-of-Spain, last night.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 7.30 pm Semi­on Daniel, 15 and An­to­nio Fran­cois, 16, were lim­ing with oth­er teens at an aban­doned house at Des­per­lie Cres­cent, Laven­tille, when two men dressed in po­lice uni­forms walked up to them, pulled out guns and opened fire.

Daniel and Fran­cois were killed on the scene.

Po­lice said two oth­er boys - a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old - were wound­ed.

One of the three sur­viv­ing es­capees, Stephen An­toine, 15, was sub­se­quent­ly de­tained by po­lice.

How­ev­er, es­capees Stephan Nicholas, 16 and Re­car­do Thomp­son, 15, es­caped the at­tack and re­main on the run.

Just three days ago, the court had giv­en the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty ap­proval to re­lease the names and pho­tographs of the five boys in a bid to find them af­ter they es­caped from a Child Sup­port Cen­tre on March 19.

The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go then sought the pub­lic’s as­sis­tance in lo­cat­ing the five mi­nors. The boys, ages 15 and 16, are from the Diego Mar­tin, St James, Laven­tille, Curepe and Siparia com­mu­ni­ties.

Po­lice said the teenagers es­caped from the north fa­cil­i­ty some­time be­tween the night of March 19 and morn­ing of March 20. An of­fi­cial at the cen­tre con­tact­ed the po­lice on March 20 at about 11.45 am to re­port that the boys were dis­cov­ered miss­ing af­ter mak­ing rou­tine checks.

CCTV footage viewed by in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers re­vealed that the boys es­caped by pass­ing through bur­glar-proofed bars in a room on the west­ern side of the build­ing.

The au­thor­i­ty's Pub­lic Ed­u­ca­tion & Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er, Cheryl Moses-Williams, urged all fam­i­lies and friends of the boys who ab­scond­ed to call the po­lice at 999 or the au­thor­i­ty’s hot­lines at 996 or 800-2014, if they con­tact them or re­ceive in­for­ma­tion about their lo­ca­tion.


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