For generations, Trinidad and Tobago offered Britons the promise of a Caribbean dream. Palm-fringed beaches, warm seas, blazing sunsets and the riot of colour that erupts each year during its world-renowned carnival made the twin-island nation seem like paradise.
Tourists came for winter escapes. British pensioners bought homes and retired beneath the tropical sun. Trinidadians who had spent decades working in Britain returned with pensions and savings, hoping to enjoy a slower and safer final chapter. That dream is now riddled with bullets.
Trinidad and Tobago has been transformed from a laid-back holiday haven into one of the most dangerous places in the world, where gunmen kill in broad daylight, gangs control communities, and foreign residents are viewed as wealthy targets. Behind the picture-postcard coastlines, families barricade themselves inside after dark. Restaurants empty early, guard dogs patrol gated homes, and local newspapers maintain a grim running count of the dead.
The latest British victim was Elaine McGowan, 65, a former Kent pub landlady who was shot outside her godfather’s home in Trincity on July 5. She was standing with her husband Ian on De La Mare Avenue when a silver Nissan pulled alongside them. A gunman climbed out, opened fire and fled.
Elaine, who ran The Castle Hotel in Saltwood, near Hythe, from 2019 until last summer, was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead on arrival. Friends remembered her as a “brilliant, helpful and lovely lady”.
Her killing was shocking in Britain. In Trinidad, it was another bloody entry on a murder toll that has turned tourism into terror. Elaine’s death follows the brutal murders of British solicitor Richard Wheeler, 73, and his wife Grace, 67, who were hacked and beaten to death in their Tobago home in 2015. A year later, promising British cricketer Adrian St John, just 22, was shot in the head during a robbery.
Their deaths span generations, but tell the same grim story. Britons who retire to the islands, and Trinidadians who return after years living and working in the UK, can be assumed to have pensions, savings, jewellery and valuable property.
To ruthless gangs, a UK accent, nice car, or well-kept home can be an advertisement for wealth. Locals have coined a bitter nickname for their homeland: “Trinidead and Tobagone”. The country of just 1.5 million people recorded a record 623 murders last year, nearly half of them gang-related. That is more than five times the number recorded three decades ago, when Trinidad and Tobago enjoyed a reputation as one of the Caribbean’s most peaceful and tourist-friendly destinations.
Its murder rate has overtaken Jamaica’s and is second in the region only to Haiti, where gangs have seized control of vast areas since the assassination of its president in 2021.
The violence is no longer confined to poor districts after dark. Gunmen strike outside homes, on busy roads and near shopping centres in full daylight. Armed robberies and home invasions fill the local papers. Families plan their evenings around getting home before dark.
“By nightfall, most people want to be safely behind their own doors,” said 27-year-old Kareem Mohammed, whose family home was raided by armed robbers posing as police officers.” You are always thinking about whether you could be held up or attacked. Crime has changed the way everybody lives.”
The Wheelers knew the risks. The couple had endured seven break-ins before their murders and installed a high-tech alarm system. They also kept guard dogs at their home in Carnbee. Neither saved them. Their killers are believed to have lain in wait before ambushing Grace as she put the car away and settled the dogs for the night.
She suffered appalling injuries to her skull and had her throat cut with what police believed was a cutlass. Her body was found the following morning by the couple’s gardener. Inside the ransacked property, officers discovered Richard’s body.
He had been beaten so badly that the pathologist who carried out the post-mortem compared his injuries to those suffered in a high-speed head-on crash. Richard had qualified as a solicitor in Britain in 1973 and later worked in Sheffield and Hong Kong. The couple had three sons and were well known in their community.
Their murders sparked demands for the killers to face the death penalty. Hanging has remained the mandatory punishment for murder in Trinidad and Tobago since independence from Britain in 1962, although no execution has been carried out since 1999.
Local resident Kenneth Ralto said at the time: “There is bloodshed in our country every day. There have been more murders than days of the year. “Our police are incompetent. God knows how many killers we have roaming free who will never face justice. We’re lucky if five per cent of them are ever caught.”
The Wheelers were part of a disturbing series of attacks on older foreign couples. Swedes Anna Sudsval, 62, and Oke Olsoon, 73, were hacked to death in 2008. Germans Hubertus Keil, 74, and his wife Birgid, 71, were killed in 2014.
British couple Peter and Murium Green survived a savage attack but were left with life-changing physical and psychological injuries. They eventually returned to Britain, unable to overcome their ordeal. Mr Green accused the police of being “grossly negligent” and warned that a serial attacker could be targeting foreign residents.
A man was charged with attempting to murder the couple, but the case was dropped because of a lack of evidence. That failure to secure convictions has fed the belief that killers can act with impunity. Cases can take years to reach court. Investigations collapse. Witnesses are frightened into silence. One suspect was only due to face trial for a killing committed almost 20 years earlier.
The bloodshed is driven by a toxic combination of cocaine trafficking, turf wars and the spread of high-powered firearms. Trinidad sits just seven miles off Venezuela, placing it on a major route for South American cocaine heading towards Europe. Its historic links with Britain, busy ports and international air routes have made it an attractive staging post for organised crime.
At New Year, an ambush on alleged Sixx gang leader Calvin “Tyson” Lee left one of his associates dead. The following day, five men were gunned down in a revenge attack in Laventille, the sprawling Port of Spain community where steel-pan music was born.
The eruption of violence prompted the government to impose a state of emergency, giving police wider powers to search homes and detain suspects. It remained in force for the first four months of the year. The murder count fell, with 203 killings recorded during the equivalent period compared with 303 a year earlier.
Few believe the gangs have been defeated. The roots of the crisis stretch back decades. Successive governments handed public works contracts to community leaders in violent districts, hoping employment and investment would buy peace.
Instead, critics say, money flowed into the hands of gang bosses, who used contracts to reward followers and tighten their grip. A notorious peace meeting at Port of Spain’s Crowne Plaza hotel in 2006 brought rival leaders together under a plan called “It Must Work”. It did not.
Gangs splintered into smaller factions and fought over contracts, territory and drug routes. The crisis is now reaching Britain in another way. There were 439 asylum applications from citizens of Trinidad and Tobago last year, nine times the number a decade earlier.
Some applicants are fleeing genuine gang threats. Others are suspected of involvement in the criminal networks behind the bloodshed. One local source claimed: “There are big drug lords in Trini who are killing people, and when it’s time to face the consequences, they are claiming asylum in the UK, saying there are people trying to kill them.”
Tourism officials fear the violence will destroy an industry worth millions of pounds. The US government advises its citizens to reconsider travel because of serious crime risks, while Britons seeking retirement in the sun are increasingly looking elsewhere. The tragedy is that Trinidad and Tobago remains a country of breathtaking beauty, proud communities, extraordinary music and generous people.
It’s carnival still floods the streets with feathers, drums and colour. Its beaches still look like the postcards. But the postcards cannot show the fear behind the gates. For Britons who moved there believing they had found a gentler life, the Caribbean dream has become a dangerous illusion. The gates are growing higher. The guard dogs are getting fiercer. The streets grow quiet earlier each night.
Paradise has not vanished completely. But the gunmen are closing in.
