Derek Achong

Po­lice of­fi­cers tasked with in­ves­ti­gat­ing a bizarre shoot­ing be­tween two of their col­leagues were up to late yes­ter­day still try­ing to piece to­geth­er what tran­spired at Grand Bazaar, Val­sayn, on Wednes­day night.

There were sev­er­al con­flict­ing re­ports over the in­ci­dent which re­sult­ed in a shootout be­tween Sgt Dar­ryl Hon­ore and Cpl Dar­nell Melville. How­ev­er, the com­mon thread was that it stemmed from a love tri­an­gle be­tween the duo and one of the men’s ex-wife.

Hon­ore was last as­signed to the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion while Melville works in the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF). Both men are said to be in their 40’s and have been of­fi­cers for over 10 years.

Ac­cord­ing to one po­lice re­port ob­tained by the T&T Guardian, around 9.35 pm an of­fi­cer went to the Ru­by Tues­day restau­rant with an “un­named fe­male com­pan­ion.” That of­fi­cer was al­leged­ly ver­bal­ly abused by his col­league, who en­tered the restau­rant sub­se­quent­ly. One of the men re­port­ed­ly ac­cused the oth­er of be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the col­lapse of his mar­riage.

“You make meh loss meh wife and meh house and I ain’t tak­ing that tonight,” the of­fi­cer is al­leged to have said in a loud tone.

One of the of­fi­cers then al­leged­ly fol­lowed the oth­er out the restau­rant, drew a firearm and be­gan shoot­ing at his col­league, who in turn drew his and re­turned fire as he backed away. The of­fi­cer who start­ed fir­ing then chased af­ter his flee­ing col­league, who was al­so still fir­ing.

Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers as­signed to the restau­rant man­aged to pull the woman away be­fore she got caught in the cross­fire.

Both men were wound­ed in the brief ex­change and were tak­en to the near­by Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, for treat­ment.

Po­lice first re­spon­ders seized the two firearms, three mag­a­zines and 12 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion from both of­fi­cers, while crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered 28 spent shells on the scene.

The re­port stat­ed that while at the hos­pi­tal, both men ad­mit­ted the firearms were their per­son­al weapons for which they were is­sued firearm users’ li­cences by the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

A sub­se­quent re­lease from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), which did not re­fer to them by name, stat­ed one of the of­fi­cers was dis­charged around 7 am yes­ter­day, while the oth­er re­mained ward­ed. The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the dis­charged of­fi­cer then went to a pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion for ad­di­tion­al treat­ment.

Both of­fi­cers are ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned by the in­ves­ti­ga­tors as soon as they are dis­charged from hos­pi­tal.

How­ev­er, a du­bi­ous pre­lim­i­nary po­lice re­port cir­cu­lat­ed yes­ter­day claimed that the of­fi­cers were the vic­tims of a shoot­ing and that their at­tack­er es­caped in a Nis­san B13.

But the lat­er main re­port ap­peared to be par­tial­ly cor­rob­o­rat­ed by CCTV cam­era footage of the in­ci­dent, which was pro­vid­ed by busi­ness­man Derek Chin, whose com­pa­ny op­er­ates the Amer­i­can restau­rant fran­chise. Footage tak­en by a mem­ber of staff and post­ed on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day al­so ap­peared to be con­sis­tent with the main re­port.

The 18-sec­ond clip, tak­en from a cam­era out­side the restau­rant, showed an armed man dressed in po­lice tac­ti­cal pants and boots walk­ing up to an­oth­er man, dressed in plain clothes, and fir­ing sev­er­al shots at close range. The vic­tim then drew a gun and re­turned fire as he ran away. The first man fell to the ground in the ex­change, but got up and hob­bled to­wards the oth­er man whilst shoot­ing.

The staff mem­ber’s video showed star­tled cus­tomers and staff hid­ing in the restau­rant’s kitchen short­ly af­ter the gun­shots rang out.

Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, In­sp Michael Seales, said yes­ter­day they were not ready to com­ment on the in­ci­dent.

“We are still gath­er­ing our thoughts be­cause the ac­tu­al facts about what oc­curred has not re­al­ly gelled as yet,” Seales said.

How­ev­er, the in­ci­dent drew scathing crit­i­cism from the pub­lic yes­ter­day, es­pe­cial­ly on so­cial me­dia where the of­fi­cers were con­demned for bring­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in­to dis­re­pute.