Ak­ile Si­mon

Three men who kid­napped a Port-of-Spain busi­ness­man were shot dead by po­lice at Carlsen Field, Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Af­ter a high-speed chase which end­ed in Carlsen Field, the kid­nap­pers shot at the po­lice, who re­turned fire. The busi­ness­man, Im­ran Mo­hammed Khan, was res­cued by po­lice, mo­ments af­ter the shoot­ing. Khan owns Joy­cie's jew­el­ry store on Queen Street, Port-of-Spain. One of his rel­a­tives was kid­napped in 2002 and re­leased af­ter a ran­som was paid. Up to late yes­ter­day, po­lice were search­ing for a fourth sus­pect who they be­lieve was wound­ed, and man­aged to es­cape through some bush­es near the WASA stock­pile. A po­lice of­fi­cer es­caped se­ri­ous in­jury and pos­si­ble death af­ter a bul­let fired by one of the sus­pects struck his bul­let­proof vest, po­lice said. Po­lice re­cov­ered a .357 mag­num re­volver, a sawed-off shot­gun, sev­er­al live rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, spent shells and cell­phones at the scene. The sus­pects' ve­hi­cle, po­lice said, was stolen. The three men of African de­scent re­mained uniden­ti­fied, up to late yes­ter­day. Po­lice are ex­pect­ed to take fin­ger­print im­pres­sions from the dead men at the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre to­day, in an at­tempt to iden­ti­fy them. At the scene, the men were iden­ti­fied by Khan as the ones who kid­napped him out­side his Fourth Street, Mt Lam­bert, home.

Po­lice said that around 8.30 am, Khan was seat­ed in his CRV out­side his home, when four men in a light blue Almera blocked his ve­hi­cle. The men who were all armed with guns dragged Khan out of the ve­hi­cle and bun­dled him in­to their car, which sped off. A de­scrip­tion of the car was giv­en to po­lice.

The car was spot­ted pro­ceed­ing south along the Uri­ah But­ler High­way. Of­fi­cers from the High­way Pa­trol, North­ern and Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force, Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence Unit, An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit, Crime and Sup­pres­sion Unit, in­clud­ing act­ing ASP John­ny Abra­ham, Sgts Aguilal, An­drews and Matthews, gave chase. Ac­cord­ing to Abra­ham, the sus­pects drove in­to Carlsen Field and lat­er aban­doned their ve­hi­cle, tak­ing Khan with them. "While in pur­suit, of­fi­cers called on the men to sur­ren­der, but, they in­stead opened fire on us," Abra­ham said yes­ter­day. "We re­turned fire, but was very cau­tious in do­ing so, since re­cov­er­ing the vic­tim was our num­ber one pri­or­i­ty, and we did not want him to get in­jured." He said it was dis­cov­ered that that three men were in­jured. Abra­ham, who heads the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau, added, "We were able to res­cue the kid­napped man. "Un­for­tu­nate­ly, three men had sus­tained gun­shot wounds about their bod­ies and died on ar­rival at hos­pi­tal," he said.

Khan was lat­er found in some bush­es, hand­cuffed and gagged. ASP Jules of the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion is in­ves­ti­gat­ing. In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert praised the of­fi­cers for their brav­ery in con­fronting armed crim­i­nals. "I un­der­stand the of­fi­cers' lives were in dan­ger," he said. "I ap­plaud them for res­cu­ing the kid­nap vic­tim who was safe­ly re­unit­ed with his fam­i­ly."