‘The day people fled the city’

The event occurred just four days after al Qaeda detonated four bombs across Inner London killing 50 people and injuring 700.

Yesterday at 2.03 pm, an explosive device went off, on the corner of Frederick and Queen Streets, with a huge bang that was heard throughout much of town.

The bomb was planted in a small green public litter-bin which was blown to bits leaving just a piece of its rim. Several people were injured in the blast and for a short period lay on the street bleeding, unattended. One injured woman about 50 years old was carried into Payless Shoe Store.

She was later brought out, looking calm and smiling slightly, and taken away in an ambulance. Shop owners locked their premises.

Reports are that the injured included three women selling watches outside Maraj Jewelers Store, plus a man and a woman passerby.

Newsday spoke to vendor Sonia Samuel who was selling with her son just 12 feet away from the blast, and who knows the victims. "Right now I’m feeling weak," she said. "It was a hard shake and a loud explosion."

Samuel said the injured women and girl were her friends. She named the women as Cindy Cox, Ann Marie Leacock, and her daughters Adana Belfast (16) and Shanti Belfast (18).

Adana was caught in the blast by a twist of fate. Samuel said, "it is the first time she ever came out to help her mother, and she got cut on her right foot."

"Right now I’m feeling shock," she told Newsday wiping a tear from her eye.

Ironically, Samuel said that police officers had been removing vendors from selling at that location prior to the explosion.

Immediately after the blast a surge of pedestrians ran up Frederick Street away from the site of the blast.

Police and army officers were quickly on the scene, joined by fire officers and ambulance crews. The injured persons were taken to Port-of-Spain General Hospital. The police tried to secure the area and tried to move away curious onlookers who they thought were too close to the scene and in potential danger of any other bombs that might have been planted.

The crowd, made up of passers-by, vendors and reporters, showed some reluctance to move. The blast was heard in Parliament which adjourned.

The bomb scorched the pavement and shopfronts black, and blew leaves off of a small tree under which it had been placed. A metal door at the front of Maraj Jewelers was dented inwards by the blast.

Reporters and cameramen from the print and broadcast media flooded the site. A policeman told reporters, "You can’t cover the story if you are dead." A senior special branch officer asked all present, including media personnel to vacate Frederick Street and go to the car park of the Trinity Cathedral where Dean Colin Sampson stood watching. Some persons stood on the rubble of the site of the former Pizza Boys where there were no objects in which any other explosive device might be hidden. Eventually a shower of rain sent people running for shelter.

Port-of-Spain Mayor Murchison Brown was quickly on the scene and was seen speaking busily into his cell phone.

At 2.35 pm Minister of Works and Transport, Colm Imbert, visited the scene but had no comment to make to the media.

By 3.10 pm a police helicopter hovered overhead.

Police top brass arrived, with promises of a media statement.