Camille Clarke

A se­ries of mi­nor of­fences com­mit­ted dur­ing J'Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions led to the ar­rest of 150 peo­ple in north Trinidad for rob­bery, pos­ses­sion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, weapons, pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na and co­caine, wound­ing, lar­ce­ny and oth­er crimes. As a re­sult, the cells at the Bel­mont, Cen­tral, Wood­brook Po­lice sta­tions and across the East-West Cor­ri­dor were re­port­ed to be "packed to ca­pac­i­ty."

Of­fi­cers from the Mul­ti-Op­tion­al Po­lice Sec­tion, Ca­nine Unit, Homi­cide Bu­reau, Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit and De­fence Force were on du­ty yes­ter­day through­out the ear­ly morn­ing cel­e­bra­tions.

There were nu­mer­ous re­ports of fights and pick-pock­et­ing. Dozens of knives were seized by the po­lice dur­ing search­es of peo­ple en­ter­ing City Gate at the maxi-taxi hub. In ad­di­tion, Besson Street po­lice ar­rest­ed a 24-year-old man with a loaded re­volver at In­de­pen­dence Square North.Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent in which a mo­torist struck a rev­eller along the To­co Main Road in Matu­ra. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the dri­ver was beat­en un­con­scious by vil­lagers and up to late yes­ter­day he was ward­ed at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal. Po­lice said the fe­male rev­eller was dragged sev­er­al yards un­der the ve­hi­cle and suf­fered two bro­ken legs.

Sgt Har­ris of the Matu­ra Po­lice Sta­tion is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. In all, 23 peo­ple were al­so ar­rest­ed dur­ing Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in To­co, Matu­ra, Man­zanil­la and San­gre Grande. A 24-year-old woman who was trav­el­ling in a maxi-taxi was ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day dur­ing a road­block along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route in Barataria. Po­lice said the woman had a long knife neat­ly wrapped in a hand­ker­chief in her bag. Her boyfriend told the po­lice he gave it to her for her pro­tec­tion. Ten knives were seized from maxi-taxis dur­ing the road­block. Homi­cide of­fi­cers are seek­ing the pub­lic's as­sis­tance in iden­ti­fy­ing the body of a man found at De Ver­teuil Street, Wood­brook, on Sun­day.

The body was found propped against a wall on the east­ern end of the street around 3.25 pm. Po­lice said the man was of mixed de­scent, in his late 30s, slim built and brown in com­plex­ion. He was ap­prox­i­mate­ly five foot nine inch­es with un­kempt long hair and stub­ble on his jaw. The corpse was clad in a blue jer­sey, black short pants, black, a pair of brown suede shoes with GBG crest on left front. A white sub­stance was on the mouth and cloth­ing. The body did not have any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and bore no marks of vi­o­lence, po­lice said.