Senior Reporter
Two people who were at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital when Antonia Cain-Kafi took her son in, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the head, are calling for political unity and family support.
Akini Kafi later died at hospital, after his father Aquil and family friend, Anthony Wilson, were killed in an attack on their car at Serraneau Road, Belmont, around 8.35 am.
Cain-Kafi was rushed to the hospital with her child by a private citizen.
One man who spoke with Guardian Media at the hospital chose not to identify himself.
The man said seeing Cain-Kafi bring her child into the hospital made him reflect on his own child.
Recalling what he saw, he said: “I was just sitting there, and the lady, she just come from the emergency side, running with the child. The child head, like, well... She (Cain-Kafi) clothes was bloody, and the child had, like, something white oozing out the head.
“The nurses and them, they panic a little bit and then they end up telling everybody to go outside.”
He added that there were too many reprisal killings and called on the relatives of Cain-Kafi to support her during this time.
“The best advice is stick together as a family, because you have to stick together as a family. She’s there alone, and sometimes if you have nobody there going through that, you’ll feel like you have nobody. So, it’s better that everybody come together and as a family, have each other’s back.”
While at the hospital, Guardian Media heard people calling for the country to spend time in prayer, as passers-by remarked that the incident was “sad.”
The second person who spoke with Guardian Media wanted to be identified only as Maureen. She called for political unity.
“To me, the politicians, they need to step up. Don’t just talk things and you ain’t do nothing. And don’t say it’s a UNC thing and a PNM thing. All of us is one person and all of us suffering. Come on, man! Get things in order to help out the situation.”
She called for more police patrols, which she said may assist in addressing crime. She said she was being attended to when the news spread that the child was brought into the hospital. She said her first thought was one of fear, hoping the attacker did not follow them to the hospital, then there was a sense of dread that a child had been killed.
“It is hard for somebody to have a child that age and then to lose it, you know what I mean? As a mother, it is very sad to see that. And to shoot a child? What an infant could do, eh? It now come in the world, it’s not two years old, what it could do? It can’t talk, it can’t see. Why shoot at an infant? But as they say, God don’t sleep.”
While at the hospital Guardian Media saw a relative of the child on the ground of the Accident and Emergency department weeping. The man left before Guardian Media spoke with him. When contacted, however, he said he was too distraught to speak.
Akini was the third child murdered this year. The triple killing took the toll to 130 for the year, five fewer than the same period last year.
CHILDREN KILLED IN 2026
* 23-month-old Akini Kafi. Gunmen opened fire on the family’s car, also killing his dad Aquil and Anthony Wilson in Belmont.
* Nine-year-old J’Layna Armstrong. J’Layna, her uncle Asim Armstrong, aunt Chelsea Edwards and Obateaiye Latiff were gunned down in a car they were in along Lady Young Road, Morvant.
* Eleven-month-old Jayden Sutton. He and his father Joseph Sutton were asleep in a room at their Dundonald Hill, St James home when they were shot dead.
