Triple murder in Belmont leaves toddler, father and friend dead

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

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A rou­tine trip by par­ents to drop off their son at his day­care turned dead­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, af­ter gun­men in­ter­cept­ed their car and am­bushed them in Bel­mont.

An­tho­ny “Mon­ster” Wil­son, 28, and Aquil “Fats” Kafi, 30, died along Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road af­ter the at­tack around 8.35 am.

Kafi’s 23-month-old son, Aki­ni, lat­er suc­cumbed to his in­juries at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH), while his moth­er, An­to­nia Cain-Kafi, 36, re­mained ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion last night.

Kafi and his fam­i­ly lived at Ser­raneau Road, Bel­mont, while Wil­son lived at Chi­na­town, Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road, Bel­mont.

Kafi lost his teenage son Zion Roberts, 14, in Ju­ly 2025, fol­low­ing a shoot­ing at Ser­raneau Road, Bel­mont.

Po­lice re­ports in­di­cate the four were in a sil­ver Toy­ota Aqua head­ing along Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road, on their way to drop Aki­ni at day­care, when a car blocked them and two gun­men got out and opened fire.

Aquil Kafi and Wil­son got out of the car and start­ed run­ning down­hill. How­ev­er, the shoot­ers pur­sued and fired more shots at them. They lat­er es­caped in their wait­ing ve­hi­cle.

Al­though in­jured, Aki­ni’s moth­er scooped up her bleed­ing son and al­so ran down­hill, beg­ging and scream­ing for help. The two were picked up by a res­i­dent who rushed them to the PoS­GH.

Foren­sic ev­i­dence col­lect­ed at the scene in­clud­ed 37 spent shell cas­ings of var­i­ous cal­i­bre.

As news of the dead­ly at­tack be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing via so­cial me­dia, mount­ing calls by the pub­lic for a cur­few were shut down by se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters at the scene in Bel­mont, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions, Suzette Mar­tin said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had no au­thor­i­ty to im­ple­ment a cur­few, as that resided with Gov­ern­ment.

Call­ing for calm to pre­vail fol­low­ing the triple mur­der, she said, “This is not just a po­lice is­sue. This is a T&T is­sue, where we all have to come to­geth­er to make the coun­try a safer place.”

De­clar­ing it re­quired a “holis­tic ap­proach” with the pub­lic work­ing with the au­thor­i­ties, she ap­pealed, “If you see some­thing, say some­thing.”

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the rel­a­tives of the de­ceased, Mar­tin said the TTPS had in­ten­si­fied op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ty with­in Bel­mont and sur­round­ing ar­eas.

“This is an ex­treme­ly trag­ic and deeply dis­turb­ing in­ci­dent which has shak­en not on­ly the Bel­mont com­mu­ni­ty, but the en­tire coun­try. The mur­der of in­no­cent cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing a child, is un­ac­cept­able and will be met with an ag­gres­sive and co­or­di­nat­ed law en­force­ment re­sponse.”

She re­peat­ed the call for help from the pub­lic.

“We are ap­peal­ing to mem­bers of the pub­lic to work with the po­lice by shar­ing any in­for­ma­tion, CCTV footage, dash­cam record­ings or oth­er ev­i­dence which may as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tors.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the fear and anger the brazen day­time shoot­ing had trig­gered among res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty and wider pub­lic, Mar­tin urged per­sons to “re­main calm.”

Re­mind­ing that the coun­try re­mained un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE), she ad­vised cit­i­zens not to take the law in­to their own hands, as one man had ear­li­er said these in­ci­dents were, “forc­ing good peo­ple to turn bad.”

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP), Crime, Richard Smith ad­mit­ted the TTPS was very con­cerned about the alarm­ing trend in re­cent homi­cides in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, which he de­scribed as a “bla­tant dis­re­spect for hu­man life.”

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as Mar­tin, he as­sured, “We are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to bring the mur­ders un­der con­trol, and yes, we can­not be om­nipresent but we have our pa­trols work­ing on a 24-hour ba­sis, try­ing to keep the peace in these ar­eas.”

Stand­ing at their wa­ter-filled buck­ets and brooms, ready to wash down the blood of the dead men be­fore it stained the road, res­i­dents wept as they broke down—watch­ing in­tent­ly as po­lice scooped up shell cas­ings and combed through the bul­let-rid­dled car.

“It is over­bear­ing now and we are fed up with it. Every mur­der is clas­si­fied as gang-re­lat­ed and that is not true,” one woman cried.

Oth­ers wept open­ly, as an­oth­er said, “Every­body hold­ing a press con­fer­ence to say last year, we had 110 mur­ders and this year we have 100, so we are do­ing a great job be­cause ten peo­ple ain’t get killed. This is not it and this can­not be the sweet T&T every­body want to put all over the world.”

The group of both young and se­nior women agreed, say­ing, “The po­lice and Gov­ern­ment keep say­ing is on­ly a hand­ful of crim­i­nals do­ing the crime, but they can’t hold none, they can’t put a dent in the crime.”

Emo­tion­al­ly drained, a third said, “So, the crim­i­nals rul­ing so­ci­ety and we liv­ing in fear every day be­cause you cyar even come on the cor­ner and stand up on a morn­ing to take a taxi to go to work or drop your child to school. Just now we will had­da lim­it the trav­el­ling.”

She added, “We can­not live un­der an SoE for­ev­er and ever. Since this Gov­ern­ment come in, is on­ly SoE, SoE, SoE. It is not the so­lu­tion. So far, since they come in, we have been un­der an SoE. This can­not be their crime plan.”

One man who came to check on his rel­a­tives liv­ing close by said, “This is re­al bad and you does nev­er hear any­one be­ing held ac­count­able for it.”

Re­fer­ring to the mur­der of Cpl Anus­ka Ever­s­ley and the theft of a cache of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion from the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion at King’s Wharf last month, he asked, “As a cit­i­zen of the coun­try, who do we trust?”

Re­veal­ing he had been forced to move his wife and chil­dren out of the area due to the crime sit­u­a­tion, he said, “It start from the top.”

He added, “Some of these fel­las was just try­ing to pro­tect them­selves, pro­tect the area and pro­tect they fam­i­ly...and get caught up in the sys­tem.”

“That’s how it re­al­ly start­ed and why it re­al­ly start­ed was cor­rup­tion at the top...every­body know that.”

We are not the drug lords. We are not the crim­i­nals. The crim­i­nals and them in suit. They are politi­cians. They are com­mis­sion­ers.”