An Es­tate Con­sta­ble, em­ployed with Thor Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices, has been com­mend­ed for his vig­i­lance and skills used in pre­vent­ing an armed rob­bery of a de­liv­ery van in Lopinot on Thurs­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 1 pm the 50-year-old guard was in com­pa­ny with a dri­ver em­ployed with Ghany Dis­tri­b­u­tion Mar­ket­ing when they stopped to make a de­liv­ery at “Just in Time Mi­ni Mart” at Lopinot Road, Arou­ca.

They were ap­proached by a man armed with a gun. The guard re­port­ed­ly lunged at the man and at­tempt­ed to grab the firearm.

The sus­pect jumped a wall and shot at the guard. The guard drew a firearm and fired two shots at the sus­pect who es­caped. Of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force-Cen­tral and Arou­ca C.I.D re­spond­ed.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Deryck Richard­son, pres­i­dent of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA), con­grat­u­lat­ed the guard for the man­ner in which he ap­proached the sit­u­a­tion, which was cap­tured on sur­veil­lance footage that went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia.

“You would see he as­sessed the sit­u­a­tion ear­ly, he po­si­tioned him­self cor­rect­ly, and he took ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to ward off the ban­dit,” Richard­son said.

Richard­son al­so high­light­ed that well-trained of­fi­cers like the EC are hav­ing se­ri­ous is­sues con­cern­ing pay­ments.

“So you have these of­fi­cers out­side there with that kind of abil­i­ty giv­ing that kind of com­mit­ment to their job,” Richard­son said.

“But the se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try has a lot of of­fi­cers like that. Who are well trained com­mit­ted, but are not re­mu­ner­at­ed prop­er­ly and these are the things we want to bring to the at­ten­tion of the pub­lic. but we cer­tain­ly con­grat­u­late the of­fi­cer for the man­ner in which he ap­proached the sit­u­a­tion it was very, very pro­fes­sion­al,” he added. ­—RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT