In­nis Fran­cis

Two men am­bushed and gunned down a 28-year-old man in broad day­light near his home in Gol­con­da yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said the vic­tim, Akoo Wil­son, a labour­er, was walk­ing along a street in Gol­con­da Set­tle­ment, a short dis­tance from his home around 8.30 am, when a car was seen head­ing to­wards him. Two armed men got out of the mov­ing ve­hi­cle while it was still mov­ing and am­bushed him, fir­ing sev­er­al shots. Wil­son fell af­ter the first shots were fired but his at­tack­ers fired sev­er­al more times while he was on the ground be­fore get­ting back in­to the car and es­cap­ing from the scene. Po­lice said he was hit in the head, chest, back and right arm.

Wil­son was rushed to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal but died dur­ing emer­gency surgery short­ly af­ter.

Po­lice said a white AD Nis­san Wag­on be­lieved to have been used in the at­tack was lat­er found aban­doned at Para­keet Boule­vard, Pleas­antville. An­oth­er ve­hi­cle was hit by bul­lets dur­ing the ear­ly morn­ing at­tack but po­lice be­lieve these were not in­ten­tion­al­ly shot at that tar­get.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 spent shells were re­cov­ered from the scene. Of­fi­cers al­so ob­tained footage from near­by CCTV cam­eras of the at­tack.

The Homi­cide South Of­fice is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

And in an un­re­lat­ed in­ci­dent, weapons seized by po­lice of­fi­cers over the week­end turned out to be noth­ing more than props used for a mu­sic video.

News of the seizure was brought to light in a video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia on Sat­ur­day night, with in­for­ma­tion ac­com­pa­ny­ing the video claimed that po­lice had seized a cache of weapons.

But the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice cleared up the mat­ter yes­ter­day in a re­lease.

“A video pur­port­ing that the po­lice seized a cache of firearms last night (Sat­ur­day) was in­cor­rect. What the po­lice found were sev­er­al ob­jects re­sem­bling firearms which were be­ing used as props in a mu­sic video.”

It said of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to re­ports that there was a group of men at the end of Sa­hadeen Trace in Ve­ga de Oropouche, armed with firearms and of loud ex­plo­sions.

A po­lice par­ty lat­er stopped a white Nis­san Navara with a group of men.

A 46-year-old man of Wa­ter­loo Road, Arou­ca, said he was the leader of the group and that they were shoot­ing a mu­sic video. A search of the ve­hi­cle re­vealed cam­era equip­ment, as well as sev­er­al plas­tic ob­jects re­sem­bling firearms of dif­fer­ent types. The leader of the group in­di­cat­ed that they were all props be­ing used in a mu­sic video.

How­ev­er, the of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered a sil­ver-coloured air pis­tol with a black grip al­so wrapped in black elec­tri­cal tape.

When asked if he had a per­mit to keep and car­ry the air pis­tol, the leader of the group said no. The of­fi­cers then seized the air pis­tol pend­ing fur­ther en­quiries.