An­na-Lisa PauL

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa@guardian.co.tt

A home in­va­sion and rob­bery with­in the gat­ed en­clave of Re­gents Park West, West­moor­ings, yes­ter­day, has left res­i­dents shak­en, even as they now look to in­crease se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to pro­tect their fam­i­lies and homes.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, two sus­pects pos­ing as de­liv­ery dri­vers for a florist ar­rived at the se­cu­ri­ty booth at Re­gents Point around 11.05 am say­ing they had an or­der for a client.

While home­own­er and busi­ness­woman Lin­da Hadeed was not present at the time, the men were giv­en en­try af­ter one of her work­ers in­struct­ed the at­tend­ing se­cu­ri­ty guard to let them in.

A 20-year-old Laven­tille woman lat­er told po­lice she opened the main gate to the home for the men, who then tied her up and al­leged­ly be­gan search­ing the house for cash and valu­ables.

Re­ports in­di­cate the men went straight to two bed­rooms, where they opened the clos­ets and at­tempt­ed to re­move safes con­tained with­in them that were bolt­ed to the walls and hid­den by cloth­ing.

The men even­tu­al­ly left one of the safes be­hind in the study, but man­aged to es­cape with TT$10,000; US$3,000 and Cana­di­an $1,000, along with a quan­ti­ty of jew­ellery which was on a dress­er in the bed­room.

Al­though foren­sic of­fi­cers said no work­able fin­ger­prints were found at the scene, po­lice lat­er de­tained the work­er af­ter she was deemed a sus­pect fol­low­ing ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tions. She was be­ing held at the West End Po­lice Sta­tion last night, while her cell phone was seized via war­rant and hand­ed over to the Cy­ber Crime Unit, TTPS.

As mem­bers of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion ini­ti­at­ed a search for the sus­pects, act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, they went to Dan Kel­ly, Pic­ton, Laven­tille, where they at­tempt­ed to speak with cer­tain per­sons about the rob­bery.

Po­lice claimed that up­on see­ing the of­fi­cers, three peo­ple in a car opened fire on them and sped off.

The of­fi­cers re­turned fire, hit­ting one man who was known to them. All three sus­pects, in­clud­ing a woman, were then ar­rest­ed.

How­ev­er, While Guardian Me­dia was at the scene, an­gry res­i­dents de­nied the three sus­pects were con­nect­ed to the rob­bery and ac­cused the po­lice of un­fair­ly tar­get­ing per­sons from Dan Kel­ly.

The res­i­dents fur­ther claimed the sus­pects were be­ing set up by the po­lice.