Two Venezue­lan men were killed by South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force of­fi­cers yes­ter­day, af­ter they al­leged­ly con­front­ed law­men with a gun and a Chi­nese chop­per dur­ing an al­leged weapons deal.

The in­ci­dent, which oc­curred around 5.30 am, pushed the num­ber of po­lice killings to 19 for the year, with 25 vic­tims in to­tal.

The dead men were iden­ti­fied as Onan Jose To­var Har­reaza, 38, and Dion­nys Gre­go­rio Gon­za­lez Gon­za­lez, 29.

Re­ports in­di­cate that the of­fi­cers, act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, went to the Table­land area af­ter they were in­formed that an arms deal was tak­ing place in a wood­en struc­ture.

As of­fi­cers en­tered the build­ing, they al­leged­ly ob­served both men en­gaged in the sale of firearms to peo­ple in­volved in the crim­i­nal un­der­world.

The law­men claimed that af­ter they iden­ti­fied them­selves, one of the sus­pects point­ed a gun at them, forc­ing them to re­turn fire.

It is al­leged that as this was tak­ing place, the sec­ond sus­pect lunged at the of­fi­cers with a Chi­nese chop­per in his hand.

The of­fi­cers con­tin­ued fir­ing at both men as they de­fend­ed them­selves. Of­fi­cers then took both sus­pects to the Princes Town Health Fa­cil­i­ty where they were pro­nounced dead.

A chrome re­volver and a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion were re­cov­ered at the scene.

—An­na-Lisa Paul