Sascha Wil­son & Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Two men were killed by po­lice in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in Ch­agua­nas and To­ba­go.

In the lat­est in­ci­dent, De­von So­tio, 44, was fa­tal­ly shot by po­lice fol­low­ing a high-speed chase in Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day. Po­lice said So­tio had ad­dress­es at Clifton Street, East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain, and Gail Trace, Long­denville.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, around 12.05 am, of­fi­cers were con­duct­ing a road­block along the Bras­so Ca­paro Val­ley Road, near Sami­rah’s Park, when they ob­served a sil­ver Toy­ota Sol­u­na ap­proach­ing from the north. The dri­ver stopped, then sud­den­ly re­versed at high speed.

Of­fi­cers from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force pur­sued the ve­hi­cle.

The sus­pect’s ve­hi­cle then changed di­rec­tion and sped to­wards the po­lice unit, by­pass­ing the road­block be­fore head­ing south. The dri­ver turned on­to Gail Trace and af­ter trav­el­ling ap­prox­i­mate­ly a quar­ter mile, lost con­trol and crashed in­to a parked Toy­ota Corol­la wag­on.

The po­lice then saw a man, dressed in a blue cov­er­all, point­ing a firearm at them. The of­fi­cers fired at him. They lat­er took the wound­ed man to the Ch­agua­nas Health Cen­tre, where he was pro­nounced dead at 12.28 am. Po­lice said a re­volver con­tain­ing two live rounds of am­mu­ni­tion was re­cov­ered from the front pas­sen­ger seat of the car.

In the oth­er in­ci­dent, a 35-year-old man want­ed by po­lice was shot and killed dur­ing an at­tempt­ed ar­rest at Egypt Junc­tion, Bethel.

Po­lice said around 9.10 am on Thurs­day, an of­fi­cer on du­ty in the area saw Ron­nel “Rat­ty” Mar­celle, who was want­ed for sev­er­al of­fences in the Shir­van dis­trict. The of­fi­cer iden­ti­fied him­self, in­formed Mar­celle of the re­ports against him, and at­tempt­ed to ar­rest him.

How­ev­er, a strug­gle en­sued, dur­ing which time Mar­celle pulled a knife and a cut­lass and tried to stab the of­fi­cer. The of­fi­cer drew his pis­tol and shot Mar­celle.

Mar­celle was tak­en to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment but lat­er died from his in­juries. In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to both in­ci­dents are on­go­ing.