Senior Reporter
A day of family fun ended in tragedy when four people, including a nine-year-old girl, were ambushed and killed while on their way home on Sunday night.
Police said 26-year-old Asim Armstrong was driving a red Mitsubishi Lancer, with his nine-year-old niece J’Layna Armstrong and friends Obataiye Latiff, 23 and Chelsa Edwards, 20, at around 7.55 pm when they were shot at by men in another car along the Lady Young Road, Morvant, near the Shiloh Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Armstrong reportedly lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a parked car nearby, as the gunmen escaped. They were among seven people who died over a three-day period, from Friday to Sunday, at the hands of the criminal element.
Residents heard the gunfire and called the police. Officers of the North Eastern Division, Morvant CID and Region II Homicide Bureau of Investigations visited the scene. A district medical officer was called in and declared all four people dead.
Crime scene investigators found 30 spent 5.56 shells and 15 spent 9 mm shells at the scene.
At the Forensic Science Centre, St James, yesterday, relatives were told to return as no post-mortem had been conducted on little J’Layna owing to a backlog at the facility.
One woman, who identified herself as Asim Armstrong’s mother and J’Layna’s grandmother, spoke briefly, describing the murders as “senseless killings.”
The woman, who did not give her name, said she was grateful for the support of relatives who visited the FSC with her. She added that she was still coping with the murders of her son and granddaughter and was too distraught to speak at length about the incident.
“My feelings going on and off… I really can’t say how it is for me… I can’t tell you how the emotions are. I can’t answer how I feel about this, because everybody seeing how it is. I can’t say if it’s good or bad, it’s madness … it’s madness that’s what this is.”
Other relatives were seen consoling each other after leaving the waiting area, as two removal vans from the funeral home assigned for storage removed the bodies until autopsies could be done later this week.
When Guardian Media yesterday visited the area where the shooting happened, several businesses, including a grocery and auto parts retailer, were open as usual.
Lady Young Road resident Trevor Charles, who lives opposite the scene of the shooting, recalled hearing the sound of gunfire on Sunday night.
“I was sitting right on this same chair when I heard the gunshots firing right on the corner. When I watched, I see some smoke rising and then about five minutes after, I see people coming from all around to see what was going on. I very sympathetic and sorry for the relatives of the people who died because when I went down there the car was there, all those people whose bodies were all over, it’s a sad thing.”
Charles said while the area was generally peaceful, incidents of shootings and murders were not unheard of in the community.
“To be honest, it’s nothing new. I saw two men got lick up a while ago, I hear bullets almost every night, sometimes from over in Chinapoo, Morvant, so it’s not shocking as such, because it’s an area like that.”
One nearby business owner declined to speak for his own safety but said he hoped the killers could be found and arrested.
Also contacted yesterday, Laventille East/ Morvant MP Christian Birchwood said he was deeply shaken by the incident, noting he heard of it just after spending time with his own daughter.
Birchwood said the incident was deeply tragic and urged his constituency to show kindness and unity as they cope with such a tragedy. He also lamented that such sporadic violence continued, even as a State of Emergency (SoE) remained in effect.
“To have something like this happen in Morvant is very tragic. I want the people in the constituency to know that we have to be strong but we have to hold people to account and why I say this is because this happened in the middle of an SoE, so one wouldn’t expect this to happen in what you would anticipate to be a more heightened level of security. For this to happen in the middle of an SoE is unacceptable, so we have to keep the faith and we have to be strong.”
According to information presented by Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro last week, the North Eastern Division (of which Morvant Police Station District is a part of) experienced a 55 per cent drop in the number of serious reported crimes as of April 17th, compared to the same period in 2025.
As of yesterday morning, there have been 110 murders, compared to 120 for the same period in 2025.
