(Trinidad Express) APPROXIMATELY 25,573 rounds of 5.56 ammunition in reserve for the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment (TTR) were discovered missing earlier this month during a physical examination at the Cumuto Barracks.
The ammo was removed from the Cumuto Barracks bunker and relocated to a nearby structure of the Barracks compound sometime in 2022.
The Sunday Express sent questions to National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds via WhatsApp between Wednesday and Friday last week about the missing ammunition at the Cumuto Barracks, but he failed to respond.
Senior army intelligence officers who decided to reveal this development told the Sunday Express last week that the missing ammunition recently prompted Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Air Vice-Marshall Darryl Daniel to order a thorough audit of all munitions at army facilities around the country.
The audit was expected to have started yesterday (Saturday), and a board of enquiry into the missing ammunition is scheduled to be convened tomorrow (Monday).
The Defence Force’s Intelligence Operation Unit has been tasked with investigating the missing ammunition at the Cumuto Barracks.
The Sunday Express forwarded questions regarding the missing ammo to Daniel via WhatsApp and the Defence Force Communications Department last Wednesday, but received no response up to yesterday.
In a private WhatsApp chat group among numerous senior officers, one officer said that “no stone will be left unturned in this matter”, and added that they should do their best to ensure this matter does not reach the media as the investigation proceeds.
However, a senior army officer confirmed on Thursday evening that the missing ammunition was “an active and serious investigation.”
Several senior army intelligence officers who spoke with the Sunday Express and provided images for the story said the ammunition was removed from the underground bunker in 2022 and placed in a room of a building about 100 metres away.
“At times, these specialised locations (bunkers) require either maintenance or upgrades. This means that if necessary, the ammunition stored, as well as live explosives and pyrotechnic explosives, would have to be relocated temporarily. As with the case at Cumuto Barracks, due to an issue with the location leaking, the reserve ammunition and other stuff were temporarily removed,” a senior officer explained, speaking on the condition of strict anonymity.
Another senior army officer familiar with the incident told the Sunday Express that water had begun to seep into the bunker, and several of the reserved ammunition that had been stored in metallic boxes and cardboard boxes got wet.
“So in some cases, the metallic boxes with the 5.56 ammunition would have started to rust and water also started to seep in. This was also happening with the 9mm ammunition that was stored in cardboard boxes that became wet and waterlogged. The bunker was built with concrete and then it’s covered with dirt and grass, and over a period of time when rain fell and the water went through the dirt, it seeped into the bunker through cracks in the concrete,” said the official.
“Usually, one person will have a key for the bunker and that would be the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM), and the team that is responsible for the reserve ammunition/explosives in the bunker will be the ammo techs. These reserved rounds are not easily accessible and only a few have authority to go where these rounds are and access it. So in this case, they would have overseen the removal of the ammunition/explosives from the bunker to the next building. Usually, young soldiers would be called to perform the task of moving the items,” the senior army officer said.
A senior army insider indicated that in addition to allocated rounds, rounds are used for daily rotational duty. “These rounds must be checked and accounted for every single day at each camp, and are stored in a different location,” he said.
Was the CDS misled?
But how come such a significant number of reserved 5.56 ammunition was discovered missing only after such a long period?
“In October last year, Col JP Roachford took over the Cumuto Barracks, and it was he who ordered a physical check into the reserved rounds in early February and realised only then that it was not physically accounted for, despite what the books would have shown. Several members of the battalion were later alerted to this.
“Officially, on Saturday, February 8, 2025, attempts were made to search the premises and members’ personal spaces in an attempt to find anything that could point to the direction of the missing ammunition, but it turned up empty-handed. A temporary measure was put in place where the rest of the reserve ammunition is stored,” a senior army intelligence officer said.
The officer added that the new site where the reserve ammunition was housed was guarded by a sentry and rotated in three eight-hour shifts.
“Nobody could say when the rounds went missing because it was only realised now, and as I said, it could have been years ago; so was a proper audit done? Was the CDS, when he said back in 2023 that all arms and ammo were accounted for by the TTDF, was he misled in some way?” questioned a senior army intelligence officer familiar with this latest investigation.
Accountability and procurement
Over the last few years, shell casings marked with “TTR” and “TTPS” were found at shooting and murder scenes—raising questions about the accountability and procurement of the T&T Police Service and Regiment’s arms and ammunition. Daniel had told a Parliament Joint Select Committee on National Security in early 2023 that all arms and ammunition were accounted for by the TTDF.
He added then that any investigation by the TTPS into “TTR” or “TTDF” spent shells found at crime scenes would reveal what may have gone awry.
While a small number of spent round casings from the TTR have been discovered at certain murder scenes and other crime-related scenes in the last two to three years, another senior army officer said that a considerable number of rounds remain unaccounted for in this instance.
“Even if we say over the last three years they found 100 rounds at several crime scenes, then where is the other 25,400?” he asked.
The discovery of the missing ammunition comes at a time when the Strategic Services Agency (SSA) is under scrutiny as a result of an audit into their processes, including unaccounted-for ammunition, according to a statement made by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley in Parliament in July 2024.
Rowley said then, “One aspect of the audit has so far revealed that the use/whereabouts of 70,000 rounds of ammunition, purchased by the SSA, remains unrecorded and unaccounted for. This matter too remains the subject of continuing audit and police investigation, while corrective action, in respect, of the management of arms and ammunition inventory has been taken.
“The corrective actions include a review of the Firearms and Ammunition Policy published in April 2022, as well as the procurement and use of vehicles, firearms and ammunition inventory checks at all SSA locations.”
The 1st Engineering Battalion at the Cumuto Barracks has shared surrounding property with other agencies such as SAUTT, SORT, SSA, the Forensic Science Centre, and a scrapyard for the TTPS. The 1st Engineering Battalion was formed out of the Utility and Engineering Corps (U&E) on October 8, 1998, under Col (Ret’d) George Robinson
