Ak­ile Si­mon

Two po­lice of­fi­cers had to run for their lives when gun­men opened fire on them dur­ing an at­tempt­ed rob­bery on the Beetham High­way on Tues­day night. PC Ke­ston Fred­er­ick, as­signed to the West End Po­lice Sta­tion sus­tained a gun­shot wound to the right foot in the in­ci­dent. He was treat­ed at hos­pi­tal and dis­charged.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, around 10.30 pm Fred­er­ick was dri­ving his ve­hi­cle east along the Beetham High­way when he ex­pe­ri­enced me­chan­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties and drove in to the NP Ser­vice Sta­tion. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, Fred­er­ick made a call to his fa­ther, who is al­so a po­lice­man as­signed to Spe­cial Branch, re­quest­ing as­sis­tance. Some time lat­er, the law­man was able to get his ve­hi­cle restart­ed and drove off. The car, how­ev­er, shut down for a sec­ond time near an area known as Hell Yard.

As the of­fi­cer got out of the ve­hi­cle, a group of men ap­proached. Po­lice said one of the sus­pect­ed rob­bers recog­nised Fred­er­ick as a po­lice of­fi­cer and in­formed his ac­com­plices who fired shots at the of­fi­cer. Fred­er­ick's fa­ther ar­rived at the scene mo­ments lat­er. As the law­man jumped in­to his fa­ther's car, the gun­men rid­dled the ve­hi­cle with bul­lets. Fred­er­ick was shot in the process. Both of­fi­cers were un­armed at the time and could not de­fend them­selves, po­lice said.

A re­port was made and close to 100 po­lice and sol­diers re­spond­ed and locked down the area in search for the at­tack­ers who could not be found. Cpl Charles and PC Thomp­son of the Besson Street CID vis­it­ed the scene along with Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors and are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. This in­ci­dent came hours af­ter PC Halls of the Re­peat Of­fend­ers Pro­gramme (ROP) shot and killed 22-year-old An­drew Williams at Barataria af­ter Williams at­tempt­ed to rob Halls of his gold chain and mo­tor ve­hi­cle.