U.S. teacher jailed for gun smuggling to Trinidad gang

A for­mer Flori­da high school teacher, who plead­ed guilty last year to pur­chas­ing firearms for a Trinidad-based crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion, has now been sen­tenced to prison in the Unit­ed States.

Ac­cord­ing to the U.S. De­part­ment of Jus­tice, 47-year-old Shan­non Nicole Sam­lals­ingh of Tem­ple Ter­race was sen­tenced to one year and one day in fed­er­al prison for con­spir­a­cy to make false state­ments to a firearms deal­er.

Sam­lals­ingh plead­ed guilty in June 2025.

Court doc­u­ments said she bought sev­en firearms and false­ly de­clared on fed­er­al forms the weapons were for her per­son­al use.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the guns were in­stead hand­ed to mem­bers of a transna­tion­al crim­i­nal group and lat­er smug­gled in­to Trinidad.

U.S. au­thor­i­ties said some of the weapons were linked to a ship­ment in­ter­cept­ed at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in April 2022.

Trinidad and To­ba­go au­thor­i­ties seized two punch­ing bags and oth­er goods ar­riv­ing from the Unit­ed States which con­cealed firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and firearm parts, in­clud­ing 9mm pis­tols, re­volvers, a shot­gun, AR-15 com­po­nents and hun­dreds of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Sam­lals­ingh had pur­chased four of the firearms re­cov­ered in the ship­ment.

The case was in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty In­ves­ti­ga­tions and the Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives, with as­sis­tance from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Transna­tion­al Or­ga­nized Crime Unit and Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit.