myTobago – your questions, review and comment about Tobago

It is with the very deepest regret that I must announce the news that we have all been dreading.

At around 10am today (Thursday 9th October) the Swedish owners of one of the Coral Seas Villas on the Bon Accord development were attacked by a man with a cutlass. The wife died immediately. The husband was rushed to hospital but died later from his injuries.

Police were on the scene within minutes but we have no news about whether anyone was aprehended. I have no other news at this time. We cannot say whether this was a bungled robbery or whether there is more to the story.

I will obviously post news here as I hear and can confirm it. I am too upset to stay beside the computer any longer, so I am switching off and going home. Hopefully there will be more news by the morning, but in truth, there is no good news that can come out of this.

This is a really terrible day for Tobago.

Truly terrible news Steve, I was shocked to hear this from our Villa manager this evening.

I just hope that the evil person or people who did this are apprehended ASAP, for the sake of this poor couple. Their friends and family are in our thoughts. RIP.

Helena

It's a sad day for Tobago - truly a shock. A day I hoped I'd never see.

RIP.

How absolutely horrendous. My husband (who lives in Trinidad) just informed me about this.

A friend and I were actually robbed and nearly sexually assaulted in a similar attack with a knife-wielding bandit in a villa in Black Rock in May 2008 and now I feel extraordinarily lucky to be alive and whole.

How absolutely sad for the friends and family of this couple and for the good people of Tobago.

What a terrible thing!
They were retired and had been living in Tobago four years in that house.

Accordning to Swedish newspaper, the police was called by a neighbour who saw a suspect person nearby. The police did response at once and 10:30am they found the man who had received two shops by the cutlass, his wife was found in the bed and her head was shopped off! The man was still alive but he died at the hospital.

According to the polise the murderer did use a ladder to climb over the wall around the house, an open safetybox was also found, so they think it was a robbery who did went completily wrong.

The attack was very brutal, not common in Tobago as far I know. For me it look more like someone came across from Trinidad. One of the policemen did say "the worst murder scene I have seen".

Ronald

This certainly puts an ominous feel on our visit in six weeks. My sympathies to the victims family.

Let us hope that lightning does not strike twice. I wish Stefan and other fellow Swedes a lovely holiday anyway. Luckliy these incidents are not HUGELY common. I must say, though, that I would choose to have a nightwatchman in my villa if and when I return.

News is beginning to filter out into the Press now. This is a link to the report on the Newsday site.
http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,87797.html

these incidents are not HUGELY common

well thats reassuring. theyre only somewhat common?

Stefan

It is correct that this is uncommon on Tobago and given what has happened I don't think focussing on the previous comment is helpful particularly.

There have been 4 murders on Tobago (including yesterday's terrible incident) this year. I am sure everyone would agree with me that 1 is too many - but likewise I am sure that there have been more than 4 in my County here in Wales this year..never mind across the whole of the country. What has happened is tragic and I fear the impact on the country and Tobago's tourism etc.. but we should be mindful that this is hopefully (likely) an isolated incident and the good people of Tobago are revulsed by what has happened.

I will be back in Tobago in December this year, in the next street (approx 200-300 yards from where this terrible murder happened.) Changing our plans would not help anyone and I still feel confident that we will enjoy our time there. I would urge everyone to just remember these are thankfully very rare events and Tobago is still a great place to go on holiday.

wasnt trying to be a smart-ass. just my way of dealing with beeing scared i guess, i have traveled all over the world and only rarely felt unsafe, never cared much about my safety neither. now, bringing my kids im a hell of alot more concerned and try to keep myself informed about safety issues at places we go. ofcourse theres a flip-side to that coin since even very rare events like this rattles you and puts things out of perspective. maybe i should just stop reading the newspapers until weve been.

Hi Stefan

Can I please clarify Helena's remarks. This is Tobago's first fatal incident involving a tourist - altough I'm listening to Tobago's local radio station at the moment and they described them as residents. I don't think they were technically residents, but were certainly villa owners who have spent a lot of time on the island over the last four years. Anyway, the point is that whilst there have been four clearly regretable murders on Tobago, these have all been local-on-local and domestic events. If memory serves me correctly, the only other incident involving murder of a "foreigner" on Tobago was back in 2005 when a 14-year old American girl living on the island and at school there was tragically killed by an ex-boyfriend after dumping him rather publicly.

The point is that there are still remarkably few attacks or incidents involving normal visitors to the island. I am reliably informed that crime-against-tourist figures are still very low compared to most Caribbean islands and compared to those in popular tourism destinations here at home.

there is an earlier post on this forum however describing a violent robbery also involving a cutlass. i dont know how common swords are on Tobago but unless they caught those robbers from a year ago it seems possible these are the same men.

Hi,

As a T&T national and a resident villa owner, I'm grateful for this public space in which to register my shock at the brutality of this crime, and to extend my deepest regrets and sympathy to the friends and families of the two victims.

Further to Steve's last post, I would also like to add that Tobago's murder rate for the year so far is 6 less than Anguilla's was in 2006, a stat found last night when, greatly distressed, I was busy googling "the safest place in the Caribbean to retire".

Yes, yesterday was a sad day for tourism in Tobago, but I think it would be an even sadder day for the human race, when we let fear become the primary motivating factor and start reorganising our lives around the unconscionable acts of one evil person. Especially when the stats are telling us that the majority of Tobagonians are very good people.

Stefan

The cutlass is the traditional tool of choice for all labourers/farmers. Children in the Caribbean learn how to use a cutlass before they learn how to use a knife and fork - and I don't mean that disrespectfully. I have often said that when away from the urban areas, a man without a cutlass is more suspicious than one carrying a cutlass. The cutlass is the Caribbean swiss knife - you would be amazed how many jobs can be undertaken with one. They are carried and used as tools, not weapons. Sadly, they are also the one thing generally close to hand when things get heated and carried away.

I think I might be cautious to say that this is an isolated incident when so many other violent incidents get pushed under the carpet. Just today the local paper was trying to say that there had been no reports of violent crime against visitors since 2005, when that simply isn't true. No murders perhaps, but violent crime does not just involve murder. What happened to me and my friend in May never made the local news as far as I'm aware, and we did file a police report immediately. While haunting the tripadvisor forum, one can find other isolated armed robbery reports in villas. The crime in Tobago seems to be far, far less than in Trinidad (for the time), but sadly, it seems to be escalating. Are the criminals coming from Trinidad? I don't know. I don't know what the solution is, but it makes me feel very sad because it seems that not too long ago people could leave their front doors open in Tobago. And all it takes is one very ugly incident like what happened yesterday to give the island a bad name as a vacation spot. And people can say "take the usual precautions" and "use common sense" all you want, but if a criminal wants to target you, he's going to find a way. Oddly enough, I felt much more unsafe and watched in Tobago than I did living in Trinidad. I felt that in Tobago we were targeted because we were two female foreign tourists staying in a villa.

Again, my heart aches for the friends and family of this family and for all the people in Tobago who will be affected by this.

Maybe i's a stupid question but I couldn't find any suggestion yet:
I know that in many places people have protecting "pepper sprays" with them.
Could those tools be helpful in selfprotection?
Any comments are welcome
Michael

Hi Mikael

As far I know, civil peoples aren´t allowed to have or use pepperspray, but there´s something called Skunk-spray one can use instead. That spray, if it hit the face, give them problem to bread and see for a some 5-10 minutes, it also have a red colour wich can stay anything from few hours up to some days!

I bought that spray in Sweden as a gift to some local friends (girls) who sometimes feldt scared to walk alone in the dark. One can also use an kind of sound-alarm, which give out a very strong signal.

Ronald

Very sad and deeply shocking!

I am hearing from friends now that there are two people in custody in Scarborough. I don't want to preempt anything, but let's hope that the eye witnesses were able to identify the right people and they have been caught.