Carisa Lee

Mo­torists along Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, had a shock­ing start to their work week on Mon­day, af­ter a man was shot and killed in a shootout with po­lice near the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT).

“Aye Mon­day morn­ing,” one dri­ver shout­ed as he record­ed the in­ci­dent.

“Right now, is re­al mad scene, re­al mad scene go­ing on right now,” an­oth­er dri­ver said as he al­so record­ed the in­ci­dent as it un­fold­ed dur­ing the ear­ly morn­ing rush hour.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, just af­ter 9 am, po­lice from the Port-of-Spain Task Force re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about a rob­bery, pos­si­ble kid­nap­ping and shoot­ing in the West­ern Di­vi­sion. They learned that the sus­pect in the stolen ve­hi­cle, a Sil­ver Nis­san B15, was dri­ving along Wright­son Road in an east­er­ly di­rec­tion.

The car was in­ter­cept­ed near French Street, where the sus­pect got out the ve­hi­cle, al­low­ing it to crash in­to a traf­fic light and ac­cord­ing to po­lice, fired sev­er­al shots in their di­rec­tion.

Re­ports said the sus­pect ran across the road in front of the uni­ver­si­ty and was head­ing west when he was shot by po­lice and fell to the ground, in the plain sight of many stuck in traf­fic along one of the main road­ways in­to the cap­i­tal city.

The sus­pect was sub­se­quent­ly tak­en to the St James Med­ical Com­plex where he was pro­nounced dead.

On the scene were of­fi­cers from the West­ern Di­vi­sion, the Port-of-Spain Task Force and the Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol Unit.

One firearm was found on the scene and sev­er­al nine-mil­lime­tre shell cas­ings in the ve­hi­cle.

One po­lice ve­hi­cle was al­so seen with a bul­let hole in the wind­screen.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the po­lice chase start­ed af­ter the sus­pect posed as a pas­sen­ger in a PH taxi work­ing the Port-of-Spain to Care­nage Route. He was the lone pas­sen­ger.

Up­on ar­riv­ing in Ch­aguara­mas, near the Skally­wag Bay en­ter­tain­ment park, he pulled out a gun and an­nounced a rob­bery. It was re­port­ed that the sus­pect then or­dered the dri­ver out of the ve­hi­cle and in­to the trunk.

While in the trunk, how­ev­er, the dri­ver called the TTPS Com­mand Cen­tre from his cell phone and made a re­port. He then man­aged to open the trunk and at­tempt­ed to es­cape but was shot in his leg by the sus­pect.

The vic­tim was lat­er tak­en to the St James Med­ical Com­plex by of­fi­cers of Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) for med­ical at­ten­tion.

The ve­hi­cle was then seen by of­fi­cers on a sta­t­ic pa­trol near Wa­ter­hole, Co­corite and was pur­sued.

From there, the chase head­ed to Wright­son Road, where it end­ed in the sus­pect’s death.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said he ap­pre­ci­at­ed the work done by the of­fi­cers. He said they han­dled it in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner and put them­selves at risk to pro­tect the state from peo­ple who breached the law.

Ja­cob said all di­vi­sions are send­ing the right mes­sages and the good re­sults are be­cause of bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion, es­pe­cial­ly from di­vi­sion op­er­a­tions cen­tres.

He said the of­fi­cers in­volved in yes­ter­day’s pur­suit, along with those who ar­rest­ed men in­volved in a rob­bery (danc­ing ban­dit) in Debe re­cent­ly, will be of­fi­cial­ly com­mend­ed lat­er this week.

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