Mark Bas­sant

A San­ta Cruz man who po­lice be­lieve was on his way to meet ac­com­plices to car­ry out a hit on a law en­force­ment of­fi­cer was ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Se­nior in­tel­li­gence sources told Guardian Me­dia the SORT of­fi­cers were on sur­veil­lance in La Canoa, Low­er San­ta Cruz, when they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about a sil­ver Nis­san B-15 with a lone oc­cu­pant in which an il­le­gal firearm was be­ing trans­port­ed.

Along with of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, they in­ter­cept­ed the ve­hi­cle on the Sad­dle Road in San Juan at around 1.15 pm. They searched the ve­hi­cle and found hid­den in a green duf­fel bag on the back seat an AK-47 and eleven rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

Po­lice said the 29-year-old sus­pect, of La Canoa Road, was tak­en in­to cus­tody with­out in­ci­dent. Po­lice took him to his home which was searched be­fore he was tak­en to a near­by po­lice sta­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors say based on in­for­ma­tion they ob­tained sub­se­quent­ly, the sus­pect was on his way to meet sev­er­al oth­er men and they were al­leged­ly head­ing to the home of a law en­force­ment of­fi­cer in east Trinidad to ex­e­cute him.

The ar­rest of oth­er sus­pects is ex­pect­ed in this on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.