(TRINIDAD EXPRESS) Another prison officer has been shot and killed.
Officer Darren Francis died from a bullet to the head.
He was killed at his home at Hindustan Village, Sixth Company, near Princes Town at around daybreak.
Francis worked at the radio station of the Maximum Security Prison in Arouca.
Sources say that prison officers were threatened this week that if the cell phones of prisoners were taken away, officers would be murdered.
Police got a call at 4.05a.m of explosions at Francis’ home.
The officer was found dead at the side of the house.
On October 5, prison officer Khalil Baksh’s home was fire bombed in Tacarigua.
Video footage captured two men igniting and throwing molotov cocktails through the windows of the house, and at the prison officer’s vehicle.
Baksh, 53, who is assigned to Eastern Correctional Prison, was at home with his son who is a police officer in the Northern Police Division.
Three days before that attack, Senior Superintendent of Prisons Wayne Jackson was shot numerous times as he pulled up to his house in Malabar.
Initial investigations revealed that the killing was a “hit” from prison.
The attack at the prison officer’s house came hours after Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith and a specialised unit of officers conducted a walk-though at Maximum Security Prison (MSP) in Golden Grove, Arouca.
Over the last 28 years, 22 prison officers have been shot and killed.
Of these officers killed was another Superintendent of Prisons David Millette. Millette, 50, was shot and killed in Morvant on November 2, 2015
And five prison officers have been killed over the last 12 months.