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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Delivery driver kills bandit in botched PoS robbery

by

Shane Superville
22 days ago
20250128
Police officers and crime scene investigators at the corner of Queen Street and Charlotte street in Port-of-Spain yesterday, where an unidentified man was shot dead by a delivery driver during an attempted robbery.

Police officers and crime scene investigators at the corner of Queen Street and Charlotte street in Port-of-Spain yesterday, where an unidentified man was shot dead by a delivery driver during an attempted robbery.

ROGER JACOB

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A rob­bery in down­town Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day end­ed with the death of a sus­pect­ed ban­dit, af­ter his would-be vic­tim gained the up­per hand and shot him sev­er­al times.

Po­lice said a de­liv­ery dri­ver was mak­ing a drop-off in the area and was stand­ing near his ve­hi­cle at the cor­ner of Queen and Char­lotte streets just be­fore 1 pm when he was con­front­ed by three men, one of whom had a gun.

The ban­dits pushed the dri­ver to the ground. How­ev­er, the man kept his wits about him­self suf­fi­cient­ly enough to pull out his li­censed pis­tol and shot one of his at­tack­ers sev­er­al times, killing him.

The ban­dit’s iden­ti­ty re­mained un­con­firmed up to press time last night.

On see­ing their ac­com­plice shot, one of the ban­dits ran away along Queen Street and on­to Dun­can Street, while the oth­er ran through East­side Plaza, es­cap­ing.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene, sev­er­al shocked ven­dors looked on at the ban­dit’s bloody body on the pave­ment near the Bel­mont Taxi Stand.

Work­ers and man­agers from near­by va­ri­ety stores al­so looked on at the scene, as po­lice from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion and the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), cor­doned off both streets as they wait­ed for crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors and a dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer to con­firm the man’s death.

But even as the body lay a few feet away, sev­er­al ven­dors con­tin­ued to sell pro­duce to passers-by, who took some time to look at the scene be­fore con­tin­u­ing with their er­rands.

One woman said while she recog­nised the man as a chain snatch­er from down­town Port-of-Spain, she did not know his name and said she had re­peat­ed­ly warned him about his life choic­es.

A near­by pro­duce ven­dor told Guardian Me­dia she heard the gun­shots, but fo­cused on run­ning away from the sound of the gun­fire rather than look­ing to see the cause.

“I was deal­ing with a cus­tomer at the time but when I heard that, I just had to run,” she said.

“I didn’t both­er to stop or look or any­thing. Look how much peo­ple walk­ing up and down and these things hap­pen­ing in full view of every­one.”

While wait­ing, sev­er­al ven­dors of­fered to bring sheets to cov­er the man’s body. How­ev­er, po­lice at the scene said they could not do that as it would con­t­a­m­i­nate the crime scene.

Sev­er­al stores close to the scene closed their doors for the day as po­lice con­tin­ued their en­quiries.

As the crowd con­tin­ued to grow, cu­ri­ous on­look­ers record­ed videos and took their own pho­tos to share on so­cial me­dia, as they spoke among them­selves over what led to the killing.

One Char­lotte Street busi­ness own­er, Ar­lene Muham­mad, be­came emo­tion­al af­ter see­ing the man’s body and called on par­ents to do their part in pre­vent­ing their chil­dren from falling in­to crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“Many fa­thers is to blame be­cause you all not tak­ing a stand to bring chil­dren up in the fear of the law. Life is tem­po­rary, we here for a short time. Make up alyuh mind. Bring your chil­dren up to fear the Lord!” Muham­mad said.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they col­lect­ed a state­ment from the de­liv­ery dri­ver and had viewed CCTV footage from a near­by lamp post as part of their en­quiry.

Of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.


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