A man iden­ti­fied on­ly as Ri­car­do was killed by po­lice on Sun­day, af­ter a con­fronta­tion with of­fi­cers who were at­tempt­ing to ar­rest him for be­ing in pos­ses­sion of an igua­na dur­ing the closed hunt­ing sea­son.

Of­fi­cers of the Ma­yaro CID were on mo­bile pa­trol when they re­spond­ed to a re­port of an in­trud­er on the com­pound of Tuck­er En­er­gy Ser­vices Ltd, New Lands Vil­lage, Ma­yaro, who was al­leged­ly steal­ing cop­per.

Checks were made of the com­pound but the in­trud­er was not found.

The of­fi­cers—con­sta­bles Meighoo, Men­tor and Rag­bir —dis­cov­ered that a quan­ti­ty of elec­tri­cal ca­bles was miss­ing and lat­er found coils of the ca­bles in a bushy area near the perime­ter fence.

The of­fi­cers sub­se­quent­ly saw a man near the com­pound who they said fit the de­scrip­tion of the in­trud­er. He was be­hind the com­pound in an open area, armed with a cut­lass, car­ry­ing a black back­pack and wear­ing a head­light.

Po­lice said Meighoo called out to the man, who ran off and was chased by Meighoo and Rag­bir.

The of­fi­cers caught up with him and again or­dered him to sur­ren­der and drop the cut­lass.

Dur­ing a search, the of­fi­cers found an igua­na in his pos­ses­sion and at­tempt­ed to ar­rest him for hav­ing it dur­ing the closed hunt­ing sea­son.

Meighoo re­port­ed that as he at­tempt­ed to ar­rest the man, he was shoved in the chest. The man then grabbed his cut­lass and swung it at Meighoo, who backed away but was chopped on his right hand.

Meighoo or­dered the man to sur­ren­der but po­lice said he again swung the cut­lass at him, caus­ing Meighoo to open fire.

The man backed away and col­lapsed down a steep hill. The of­fi­cers at­tempt­ed to re­move him but were un­able to do so.

Their at­tempts to pro­vide med­ical as­sis­tance were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.

Ri­car­do’s body was lat­er re­moved from the scene, and an au­top­sy was or­dered.

All three of­fi­cers were tak­en to the Ma­yaro Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where they were treat­ed and dis­charged with mi­nor in­juries.