Po­lice were forced to keep a pres­ence at Beetham Gar­dens, Laven­tille, last night, to quell fur­ther pos­si­ble protests from res­i­dents over the shoot­ing death of Christo­pher Greaves.Greaves, 25, died at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal last evening af­ter he was shot by po­lice ear­li­er in the day.In re­sponse to his death, res­i­dents staged fiery protests along the East­ern Main Road and Beetham High­way, claim­ing the po­lice could have saved his life if they had al­lowed res­i­dents to as­sist him im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter he was shot.At one stage yes­ter­day, po­lice and the res­i­dents were in­volved in a cat-and-mouse game. Soon af­ter po­lice cleared de­bris from the road­way, res­i­dents re­turned to pile more, cre­at­ing a traf­fic jam in the process.

The po­lice even­tu­al­ly di­vert­ed traf­fic to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route to en­sure the safe­ty of mo­torists.As is of­ten the case with such shoot­ing in­ci­dents, there are two sides to yes­ter­day's sto­ry.

The res­i­dents claimed that Greaves, of Fifth Street, had gone to a par­lour on Third Street around 4.45 pm to buy a snack for one of his chil­dren.How­ev­er, while on his way there, res­i­dents claimed of­fi­cers on pa­trol in the com­mu­ni­ty al­leged­ly opened fire on him. Greaves re­port­ed­ly ran a short dis­tance be­fore col­laps­ing in a near­by al­ley.Res­i­dents claimed, how­ev­er, that the po­lice did not al­low them to give any as­sis­tance to Greaves, as he lay bleed­ing on the ground and cry­ing for help for al­most half an hour.Even­tu­al­ly, the po­lice picked Greaves up and took him to the hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.Res­i­dents last night de­mand­ed jus­tice, say­ing Greaves had no crim­i­nal record.

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Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, how­ev­er, around 4.45 pm, Greaves was walk­ing on Third Street when of­fi­cers on pa­trol no­ticed he had a firearm in his pos­ses­sion.The of­fi­cers chal­lenged him and Greaves opened fire on the po­lice. The po­lice re­turned fire and Greaves was shot. The of­fi­cers said they even­tu­al­ly took Greaves to hos­pi­tal.An hour lat­er, res­i­dents staged a protest by throw­ing garbage and de­bris on the Beetham High­way. Se­nior of­fi­cers at the scene said many at­tempts were made to re­move the de­bris, but res­i­dents kept putting more de­bris back each time it was cleared.As a re­sult of this, of­fi­cers said mo­torists were di­vert­ed to PBR and East­ern Main Road for their own safe­ty.In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.