Tragic end for dad & son as gunman strikes St James home in dead of night

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

In­stead of prepar­ing for the first birth­day of her in­fant son, Leona Allen now has to make fu­ner­al arrange­ments for her son and com­mon-law hus­band, af­ter an ear­ly morn­ing shoot­ing in Dun­don­ald Hill, St James.

Po­lice said Joseph Sut­ton, 25 and his 11-month-old son Jay­den were asleep on the bed in their home just be­fore 1 am when they heard their pet dog bark­ing loud­ly.

Allen went to check on what was caus­ing the com­mo­tion when a stranger stuck a gun through the bed­room win­dow of the house, shoot­ing both fa­ther and son, be­fore flee­ing on foot.

Both Sut­ton and his in­fant son were tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal by rel­a­tives, where they were de­clared short­ly af­ter.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day, Allen con­firmed that Sut­ton had sur­vived a shoot­ing at­tack on March 16.

When asked what would have caused the at­tack against Sut­ton, Allen said she felt he was en­vied by peo­ple in the neigh­bour­hood for own­ing a small mi­ni-mart.

“The whole hill didn’t like him, they were jeal­ous of him. He had a mind of his own and he didn’t fol­low any com­pa­ny or any­one around him,” Allen said.

She added that af­ter he was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal af­ter that at­tack, they had dis­cussed leav­ing Dun­don­ald Hill, as they felt their lives were in di­rect dan­ger. She lament­ed that the lat­est at­tack hap­pened be­fore they had a chance to leave and save them­selves.

“When he came out, we were look­ing for places to go and live, try­ing to see if some­one can come and buy the place but then this came and hap­pened.

“We didn’t re­al­ly pay much mind to it... we weren’t ex­pect­ing any­one to swing back to do any­thing, es­pe­cial­ly to take my child al­so,” a dis­traught Allen said.

Allen said she was still strug­gling to come to terms with the loss of her com­mon-law hus­band and child in a sin­gle in­ci­dent, as she re­flect­ed on Jay­den’s ac­tive, play­ful na­ture, say­ing he en­joyed eat­ing and watch­ing his favourite chil­dren’s pro­gramme Ms Rachel.

Guardian Me­dia al­so vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly’s home where the shoot­ing oc­curred. A trail of blood streaks and drops were still vis­i­ble on the walk­way to the steep hill out­side, where both fa­ther and son were car­ried by rel­a­tives to a near­by ve­hi­cle which took them to hos­pi­tal.

Re­fer­ring to the mur­ders of hus­band and wife Ko­rey Clarke and Saman­tha Patrick in low­er Dun­don­ald Hill in Oc­to­ber 2022, Sut­ton’s fa­ther, Mag­nus Sut­ton, said he felt that the vi­o­lence in the area nev­er ful­ly sub­sided, de­scrib­ing it as a “spir­it of death,” which he felt was mi­grat­ing fur­ther along the hill.

“It’s com­ing up the road, this spir­it mov­ing around... it run­ning.”

The el­der Sut­ton said his son was on the road to re­cov­ery af­ter his shoot­ing and be­lieves the lat­est at­tack was part of ef­forts to si­lence him for good.

He said his son’s death was dis­cour­ag­ing to peo­ple who want­ed to re­port in­ci­dents to the po­lice.

“He got three shots al­ready, for the month... he’s a wit­ness, so, in or­der for them to have noth­ing, they come and deal with the wit­ness,” the el­der Sut­ton said.

“You know if the po­lice say if you see some­thing say some­thing, if you see some­thing say noth­ing, be­cause this is what hap­pens.”

Re­call­ing his last con­ver­sa­tion with his son, Sut­ton said they were dis­cussing buy­ing chick­ens to rear, as the younger Sut­ton was wary of as­so­ci­at­ing with oth­er peo­ple in the neigh­bour­hood be­cause he felt oth­ers would have been jeal­ous of him.

Re­flect­ing on the loss of his son and grand­son in a sin­gle at­tack, Sut­ton said he was deeply hurt by the in­ci­dent and even fear­ful for his own life.

“You know as Trinida­di­ans we try to live we life and go along day by day. He (Jay­den) now start to walk and thing, he just have four teeth in his mouth so he was eat­ing plen­ty.”

Rel­a­tives said Jay­den’s grand­moth­er cre­at­ed a makeshift swim­ming pool for him us­ing a re­cy­cled wa­ter tank, which he en­joyed play­ing in, not­ing that the child’s mur­der had left the en­tire neigh­bour­hood in grief.

Point­ing to a dam­aged street­light, Sut­ton said he felt the gun­man was re­spon­si­ble for the dam­age in a bid to cov­er their es­cape by mak­ing the street dark­er.

While in the neigh­bour­hood yes­ter­day, of­fi­cers of the Re­gion I Homi­cide Bu­reau were seen can­vass­ing the area, walk­ing through dirt tracks and nar­row paths, check­ing to see if any­thing was over­looked dur­ing the ini­tial en­quiries by re­spond­ing of­fi­cers ear­li­er that morn­ing.