A 16-year-old San­ta Cruz boy is ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned in re­la­tion to a stolen car he was caught dri­ving through Curepe ear­ly yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers from the St Joseph CID were on pa­trol along the South­ern Main Road at 1 am when they saw a sil­ver Nis­san hatch­back Ti­i­da with a li­cense plate match­ing that of a car that was re­port­ed stolen in St James hours ear­li­er.

Po­lice in­ter­cept­ed the car and found the mi­nor.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the car was rent­ed by a 39-year-old woman who parked it near the Au­drey Jef­fers High­way at 10.23 pm on Mon­day.

The woman told of­fi­cers that she walked a short dis­tance away and had a con­ver­sa­tion on the phone be­fore re­turn­ing to the area where she parked the car around 11 pm when she re­alised it was miss­ing.

In an un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dent, two sus­pects were able to es­cape po­lice of­fi­cers but dropped a gun as they fled in­to a forest­ed part of San­ta Cruz on Mon­day af­ter­noon.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers from the Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol (ERP) Spe­cial Re­sponse Unit re­ceived a tip that men with a gun were near a river­bank and went to the scene.

As of­fi­cers reached the area, they saw two men walk­ing through a dirt track. On see­ing the po­lice, the men dropped a black plas­tic bag and ran through near­by bush­es.

On check­ing the bag dropped by the men, the of­fi­cers found a sil­ver MAC 10 with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion.

In an­oth­er in­ci­dent hours lat­er, po­lice vis­it­ed Cana­da Plan­nings, Pic­ton Road, Laven­tille, at 9.30 pm and found a Se­bro Mav­er­ick 12-gauge shot­gun, two 12-gauge car­tridges and six grammes of co­caine hid­den in a pink bed­sheet.

These ex­er­cis­es were co-or­di­nat­ed by ACP Tac­ti­cal Sup­port Col­lis Hazel as part of Op­er­a­tion BLAST (Bring­ing Land, Air and Sea To­geth­er).

Se­nior po­lice said the ERP’s Spe­cial Re­sponse Unit was re­cent­ly formed as a means of strength­en­ing po­lice re­sponse to crimes in dif­fer­ent ar­eas and al­so gath­er in­tel­li­gence.

— Shane Su­perville