Ot­to Car­ring­ton

A na­tion­wide man­hunt was up to last night con­tin­u­ing for a sus­pect in yes­ter­day’s ex­plo­sion at the Gov­ern­ment Plaza Parkade in Port-of-Spain, which forced the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and Fire Ser­vice to cor­don off parts of the cap­i­tal city from pedes­tri­an and ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic for sev­er­al hours as they in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that they have a lead from Closed Cir­cuit Tele­vi­sion (CCTV) video from build­ings in the area and an ar­rest could be im­mi­nent.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that just min­utes to 11 am, staff and oth­er per­sons at the Parkade heard a loud ex­plo­sion near the Parkade, lo­cat­ed be­tween Ed­ward and Rich­mond Streets.

The ex­plo­sion led to pan­ic among cus­tomers at the fa­cil­i­ty at­tempt­ing to get to their ve­hi­cles. With­in 10 min­utes, fire and po­lice of­fi­cials re­spond­ed and streets were closed. Busi­ness­es and Gov­ern­ment min­istries were told to evac­u­ate and close for the rest of the day.

Af­ter an hour, of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Branch and Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion con­duct­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions at the Gov­ern­ment Plaza and Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Guardian Me­dia was told the in­ves­tiga­tive team found a de­vice that ap­peared to be some mod­i­fied fire­crack­ers and it was det­o­nat­ed.

No one was in­jured and the on­ly dam­age was to the dust­bin the de­vice was placed in.

In 2019, there was a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent at the Parkade, where per­son­nel from the Ex­plo­sive De­tec­tion and Dis­pos­al Unit (ED­DU) at­tached to Spe­cial Branch were called in and a de­vice was found.

How­ev­er, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob de­nied claims of an at­tack on the the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s build­ing, which is op­po­site the Parkade.

An armed security officer speaks with crime scene investigators requesting permission to enter a restricted area after some streets in the capital were closed off following the explosion at the Government Plaza Parkade in Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

“In or­der to de­ci­pher whethere there was any sort of pro­jec­tile that came from a firearm at the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice, we had cause to use a drone and from what we dis­cov­ered, there was no such sit­u­a­tion ex­ist­ing. There was in fact a cracked glass pane but it had noth­ing to do with any pro­jec­tile.”

Ja­cob said the po­lice con­clud­ed that what hap­pened at the Parkade was to­tal­ly sep­a­rate from the crack in the glass at the AG’s of­fice.

He con­firmed there was a man­hunt for a sus­pect/s.

“We dont have all the in­for­ma­tion, as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing. How­ev­er, what I can say is that the de­vice that was found in the bin that ex­plod­ed was an an­ti­quat­ed piece of de­vice fit­ted with some fire­crack­ers and it cre­at­ed no dam­age to any­one or to prop­er­ty,” Ja­cob said.

He al­so said he was proud of the pro­fes­sion­al man­ner in which the TTPS fol­lowed in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards in deal­ing with the re­port, adding it was done to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of peo­ple.

“Some­time in the past, a de­vice was found at this said lo­ca­tion and there seems to be per­sons who seem bent on cre­at­ing hys­te­ria with­in our coun­try and they are jeal­ous and en­vi­ous as to what is hap­pen­ing in oth­er coun­tries and I think this is some­thing that we should not pat­tern and per­sons seem to pat­tern things that they tend to see abroad,” Ja­cob said.

“It cre­ates a high lev­el of neg­a­tiv­i­ty in our coun­try and we are ask­ing per­sons to re­frain from that sought of be­hav­iour be­cause it is not do­ing good for our coun­try.”

Ja­cob al­so com­ment­ed on a voice note cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia on the week­end that al­lud­ed to at­tacks on the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion and oth­er in­ci­dents of crime in the cap­i­tal.

“Per­sons are now us­ing tech­nol­o­gy and so­cial me­dia in a neg­a­tive way to af­fect the safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and the prop­er mind­set of our peo­ple and we are do­ing our in­ves­ti­ga­tion to un­earth the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for caus­ing this with­in our coun­try and we will def­i­nite­ly bring them to jus­tice and we have ap­point­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tor.”

He said with this lat­est in­cid­net at the Parkade, the po­lice will have to look at ways of in­creas­ing polic­ing in those ar­eas.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to these oc­cur­rences.