A man was shot and killed by po­lice dur­ing an an­ti-crime op­er­a­tion in Cou­va on Tues­day night, as of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to in­tel­li­gence about il­le­gal firearms and am­mu­ni­tion in the area.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­firmed yes­ter­day morn­ing that of­fi­cers en­tered a home in the dis­trict, where they were con­front­ed by an armed man.

“Re­spond­ing to the im­me­di­ate threat, of­fi­cers dis­charged their ser­vice-is­sued weapons, in­jur­ing the sus­pect in the process. De­spite ef­forts to se­cure med­ical at­ten­tion at the Cou­va Health Fa­cil­i­ty, the in­di­vid­ual lat­er suc­cumbed to his in­juries,” Gue­var­ro said.

A firearm was re­cov­ered at the scene. The in­ci­dent is cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The in­ci­dent was the fifth po­lice killing since the State of Emer­gency was de­clared and the four fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing for the week.

The shoot­ing was one of sev­er­al po­lice op­er­a­tions across the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion overnight.

In a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent, a 45-year-old man was ar­rest­ed fol­low­ing a shoot­ing at his Cou­va home that was first re­port­ed as a rob­bery but lat­er re­vealed to be a do­mes­tic dis­pute.

Around 8.35 p.m. on Mon­day, the man told po­lice that an armed in­trud­er en­tered his home on Fire Sta­tion Road, an­nounced a hold-up, and shot his com­mon-law wife.

How­ev­er, fur­ther ques­tion­ing al­leged­ly re­vealed the in­ci­dent stemmed from an ar­gu­ment be­tween the cou­ple.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, a strug­gle over what ap­peared to be a firearm re­sult­ed in the woman be­ing shot in the chest. She was ini­tial­ly tak­en to the Cou­va Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal and lat­er trans­ferred to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where she re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered a sil­ver ob­ject re­sem­bling a re­volver with one live and one spent .38 round. Of­fi­cers al­so col­lect­ed gun­shot residue swabs from the man.

He was ar­rest­ed, re­ceived med­ical at­ten­tion, and is cur­rent­ly in cus­tody at the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

Lat­er in the night, of­fi­cers car­ried out a tar­get­ed op­er­a­tion in the En­ter­prise dis­trict, which led to the seizure of quan­ti­ties of co­caine, mar­i­jua­na, and am­mu­ni­tion. Two peo­ple were ar­rest­ed in that op­er­a­tion.

“Col­lec­tive­ly, these events re­flect a chal­leng­ing op­er­a­tional land­scape that de­mands both vig­i­lance and pre­ci­sion,” Gue­var­ro said.

He not­ed that il­le­gal firearms con­tin­ue to pose the most se­ri­ous threat to pub­lic safe­ty but praised mem­bers of the pub­lic for their grow­ing co­op­er­a­tion.

“The feed­back and in­for­ma­tion com­ing from the pub­lic has been over­whelm­ing. I want to pub­licly thank you for show­ing us that you trust us. As you can see, that in­for­ma­tion is be­ing act­ed up­on. Part­ner­ship with the pub­lic is key.”