Sturge shocked man held for plot to assassinate him gunned down

Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge says he is shocked by the mur­der of busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra, who was held last year for an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate him.

Guer­ra, own­er of DG Homes and oth­er busi­ness­es, was shot sev­er­al times while in his ve­hi­cle out­side his busi­ness place at his North Oropouche Road, San­gre Grande of­fice. He was lat­er pro­nounced dead at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal.

“I am shocked like every­one else,” Sturge told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day morn­ing in re­sponse to a re­quest for com­ment. He lat­er ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Guer­ra’s rel­a­tives.

Not on­ly did Sturge, MP for To­co/ San­gre Grande, count Guer­ra among his con­stituents, but he was al­so among his clients.

Be­fore be­ing elect­ed to Par­lia­ment, Sturge, a crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney, rep­re­sent­ed Guer­ra in sev­er­al le­gal mat­ters dat­ing back over 11 years ago, along with now Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen.

Guardian Me­dia was al­so in­formed that Guer­ra was a keen sup­port­er of Sturge dur­ing his Par­lia­men­tary run for last year’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

But by No­vem­ber last year, un­der that State of Emer­gency (SoE), Guer­ra was de­tained af­ter in­tel­li­gence agen­cies un­cov­ered that he was al­leged­ly be­hind a cred­i­ble plot to as­sas­si­nate Sturge, which led to height­ened se­cu­ri­ty for him and his rel­a­tives.

At the time, re­ports sug­gest­ed that the threat was linked to il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence and was “a re­al and present dan­ger”.

Re­ports al­so sug­gest­ed that the threat stemmed from Sturge’s re­fusal to in­stall in­di­vid­u­als hand-picked by po­lit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed fig­ures in­to state and con­stituen­cy-lev­el po­si­tions.

On Au­gust 9, in Matu­ra, Sturge’s se­cu­ri­ty de­tail drew weapons when a white, heav­i­ly tint­ed Maz­da 3 with four oc­cu­pants ap­proached the min­is­ter dur­ing a con­stituen­cy vis­it. The car fled af­ter the de­tail in­ter­vened and has been linked to at least three pre­vi­ous pass­es near the min­is­ter’s con­voy.

An­oth­er in­ci­dent on Ju­ly 29 in­volved peo­ple hid­ing in brush near Waller­field who hurled stones at Sturge’s con­voy around 12.30 am, dam­ag­ing an SUV’s wind­shield. Two pri­vate ve­hi­cles were al­so struck. The threats sur­faced at the time the Gov­ern­ment can­celled the an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade sched­uled for Au­gust 31 at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, fol­low­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns tied to the then-on­go­ing state of emer­gency de­clared Ju­ly 18. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies warned that or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs op­er­at­ing from be­hind prison walls were plan­ning to as­sas­si­nate key jus­tice and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials.

Af­ter Guer­ra was re­leased from cus­tody in Jan­u­ary this year, Sturge said he was not afraid for his life.

“I am not afraid. We all die...If you give me a choice be­tween can­cer and as­sas­si­na­tion, I’ll choose an as­sas­si­na­tion.”

When Guer­ra’s mur­der took place yes­ter­day, Sturge was in Par­lia­ment and lat­er con­tributed to the de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the lat­est SoE.

As he was dis­cussing videos of firearms and drew a ref­er­ence to Guer­ra, he re­spond­ed to cross-talk fol­low­ing the men­tion of the name and that he was now free.

“OK, I didn’t know you know? I’ve al­ways been free. He is al­so free now. Free as a bird,” he said.

Asked yes­ter­day if he had any fur­ther com­ments, giv­en his long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with Guer­ra, he added: “Con­do­lences go out to his wife and daugh­ter.”

Yes­ter­day, Sturge vis­it­ed his To­co/San­gre Grande con­stituen­cy to at­tend the Matelot Sports in Matelot. He post­ed pic­tures on his Face­book page.

Guer­ra was the man­ag­er of D Guer­ra Ltd and owned sev­er­al com­pa­nies un­der the D Guer­ra Group of Com­pa­nies, a re­al es­tate com­pa­ny do­ing hous­ing de­vel­op­ments.

But for decades, al­le­ga­tions of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing dogged him. There were sev­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions and sev­er­al le­gal mat­ters.

On Oc­to­ber 11, 2025, Guer­ra and his son, Garvin, were charged with un­law­ful pro­cess­ing of ag­gre­gate with­out a li­cence from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and grant­ed $50,000 bail each by a jus­tice of the peace.

A po­lice op­er­a­tion at Manuel Con­go, Gua­napo, led to the ar­rest of Guer­ra and 17 oth­ers and re­sult­ed in the seizure of a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar pro­cess­ing plant, trucks and oth­er heavy ma­chin­ery.

One month lat­er, he was de­tained on a plot to as­sas­si­nate Sturge.

On No­vem­ber 19, 2025, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der signed a de­ten­tion or­der which ac­cused Guer­ra of pos­ing an im­mi­nent threat to pub­lic safe­ty, in­clud­ing an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

On No­vem­ber 20, he was ar­rest­ed.

The or­der said that Guer­ra’s group had ac­cess to high-pow­ered firearms and in­tend­ed to es­ca­late at­tacks against ri­val gangs in pub­lic spaces.

His son, Garvin, was al­so de­tained on a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der.

On Jan­u­ary 2, 2026, he was re­leased af­ter be­ing de­tained for about six weeks af­ter his at­tor­neys es­ca­lat­ed their le­gal chal­lenge to his pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion, is­su­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Alexan­der and threat­en­ing im­me­di­ate High Court pro­ceed­ings un­less the de­ten­tion or­der was re­voked.

Ac­cord­ing to the pre-ac­tion let­ter, since his ar­rest, no crim­i­nal charges had been laid against him.