An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

One man was killed in a po­lice shoot­ing at Beetham Gar­dens ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing. He has been iden­ti­fied as Ker­rance Bur­ton of 6th Street, Beetham Gar­dens. 

Re­ports in­di­cate that around 12:10 am, of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) were on joint mo­bile pa­trol/ex­er­cise du­ty in the Beetham Sea Lots area in com­pa­ny with oth­er mo­bile pa­trols con­sist­ing of IATF and Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) of­fi­cers when they ob­served two men in the vicin­i­ty of 10th Street Beetham Gar­dens, who be­gan to run as they saw the ve­hi­cle ap­proach­ing.

Of­fi­cers re­port­ed that as Bur­ton fled from the po­lice, he point­ed a firearm at the of­fi­cers and opened fire on them. He then en­tered a track be­tween 10th and 11th Street and al­leged­ly point­ed the gun at the of­fi­cers. He was shot by po­lice. The man was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he died. 

A po­lice re­port stat­ed that of­fi­cers re­trieved one black met­al ob­ject re­sem­bling a Beretta pis­tol from the sus­pect that con­tained 12 met­al ob­jects re­sem­bling 9mm am­mu­ni­tion. A bag of white pow­der re­sem­bling co­caine was found in his un­der­wear, po­lice stat­ed.

The of­fi­cer who shot Bur­ton fired five 5.56 bul­lets from his ser­vice-is­sued ri­fle. Po­lice in­di­cat­ed that res­i­dents ap­peared peace­ful at the time of the shoot­ing, and there were no signs of protest ac­tion.