Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

In an un­ex­pect­ed twist of events, a ban­dit need­ed the as­sis­tance of law en­force­ment yes­ter­day af­ter he ap­par­ent­ly fell through the roof of Town Cen­tre Mall and got stuck in be­tween two build­ings on Cha­con Street, Port-of-Spain.

He was iden­ti­fied as a 19-year-old man from Curepe. He was one of the five men who po­lice ar­rest­ed af­ter they at­tempt­ed to break in­to the Pay­less ware­house along Queen Janelle Com­mis­siong St and Fred­er­ick Streets.

The build­ing is at­tached to Ap­ing Traders Fash­ion Store.

The oth­ers were iden­ti­fied as a 32 sus­pect of Beetham Gar­dens, a 30-year-old man of Mal­ick, a 39-year-old man and a 22-year-old al­so from Beetham Gar­dens.

Po­lice said the own­er of Ap­ing Traders Fash­ion Store re­port­ed that the alarm for the busi­ness went off at around 3 am.

Mem­bers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force re­spond­ed and cor­doned off the area un­til she ar­rived.

The po­lice searched the three-storey struc­ture which was cov­ered with gal­vanise and con­crete roof­ing.

That was when they ob­served four sus­pects on the rooftop. One was re­port­ed­ly armed with a firearm and ten rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

Of­fi­cers al­so found a black bag con­tain­ing sev­er­al sneak­ers, slip­pers, and cloth­ing. Po­lice said there were al­so house­break­ing im­ple­ments on the rooftop and a fur­ther search led them to an­oth­er stuck on the rooftop.

Fire of­fi­cers from the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion, un­der the watch of act­ing fire sta­tion of­fi­cer Leo Ramkissoon and Dale Com­mis­siong, re­spond­ed and with the use of a hy­draulic lift the sus­pect was safe­ly re­moved from the ceil­ing at 9 am.

He was tak­en for med­ical at­ten­tion and then back in­to po­lice cus­tody. The in­ci­dent was wit­nessed by many mak­ing their way to work in the cap­i­tal.

One eye­wit­ness, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said the ban­dits were on the roof when he ar­rived for work on Fred­er­ick Street.

He said they at­tempt­ed to es­cape by jump­ing from roof to roof and that was when the ban­dit got stuck.

“He was there for about two hours,” the eye­wit­ness said. “The po­lice and them did a great job and they ap­pre­hend­ed all of them,” he added.

One busi­ness own­er, who al­so did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said when she got the call she thought it was her store that had been bro­ken in­to. She said she pan­icked be­cause she had just re­ceived Christ­mas items.

“It’s a scary en­vi­ron­ment to be in. I am dis­ap­point­ed in the state of the coun­try,” she said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to speak with the own­er of Ap­ing Traders Fash­ion Store, but the busi­ness own­er de­clined to be in­ter­viewed, not­ing on­ly that noth­ing had been stolen.