A pregnant woman was stabbed and slashed 15 times yesterday morning at her upstairs Mt Lambert apartment by a man she knows.
She remained in critical condition at hospital last night.
The man then attempted to end his own life, but was held by police and remained in custody yesterday.
The 31-year-old man is a security officer with Customs and Excise Division, Port of Spain, police sources said.
A relative of the woman said she could not disclose the victim’s name as “she is a very private person”.
A resident living near the apartment told the Express that around 8 a.m. she heard screaming.
“I low down my TV and I only hearing, bawling, bawling, bawling,” she said. “When I looked through my window I saw a woman running down the steps. I hear she was pregnant and he stabbed her up.”
She said she saw woman clutching her abdomen and bleeding.
When she got to the bottom of the stairs of her apartment, she ran into an apartment on the ground floor occupied by an off-duty police officer.
The resident said the woman’s attacker chased after her then ran back up the stairs and was heard shouting at the woman to come back into the apartment.
By this time most of the residents of the apartment complex had emerged from their homes and were looking on.
Police were contacted and three vehicles from the Barataria Police Station arrived.
A team of officers they took the injured woman to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope, where she remained in stable but critical condition last night.
Police said her attacker locked himself inside the apartment and despite multiple requests by the police on scene he refused to come out.
Police used a crowbar to open the door and saw the man attempting to end his life.
They then took him to the Barataria Police Station where he remained being questioned up to last night.
