The Po­lice Ser­vice has con­firmed that it has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a shoot­ing in­ci­dent in Barataria this morn­ing, which left a Prison Of­fi­cer wound­ed.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued a short while ago, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Christo­pher con­firmed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion had al­ready be­gun, and that the Po­lice Ser­vice was work­ing along­side the Prison Ser­vice.

Prison Of­fi­cer Steve Phipps, the dri­ver of the Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, was shot and wound­ed just af­ter 7 am, while he was at the Deputy Com­mis­sion­er's house.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, a white Toy­ota Axio and a gold Nis­san Almera drove up to the prison of­fi­cer's car, and three masked gun­men got out and shot at him. The men re­port­ed­ly used high pow­ered as­sault ri­fles in the at­tack.

The scene of the shooting incident at the home of the Deputy Commissioner of Prisons on Wednesday 11 October 2023, which left his driver wounded.

The 49-year-old dri­ver ducked be­hind the dash­board avoid be­ing shot but was wound­ed twice in his up­per and low­er right arm.  He un­der­went treat­ment at hos­pi­tal.

“I want to as­sure the pub­lic that the safe­ty and well-be­ing of our law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, and the com­mu­ni­ty re­mains our top pri­or­i­ty,” Com­mis­sion­er Christo­pher said in the TTPS re­lease.

“We in­tend to use all the re­sources at our dis­pos­al to ap­pre­hend those re­spon­si­ble for this at­tack,” she as­sert­ed.

The top cop is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide an up­date on the probe at to­day’s TTPS Me­dia Brief­ing, sched­uled for 1:30 pm.