An­na-Lisa Paul

A 39-year-old man is hos­pi­tal­ized in crit­i­cal con­di­tion af­ter he was shot by po­lice on Thurs­day night, dur­ing an al­leged con­fronta­tion out­side the Care­nage home of pop­u­lar dance­hall artiste Taryll Mi­cal Swan who is wide­ly re­ferred to as Prince Swan­ny.

The shoot­ing was the sec­ond such in­ci­dent to oc­cur for the week, at the singer and song­writer’s res­i­dence at Fran­cois Street.

On Sep­tem­ber 19 around 1.15 am, gun­men con­verged on the res­i­dence and opened fire fol­low­ing re­ports that Swan was at the lo­ca­tion.

While it is still not known if any­one was at the house dur­ing that shoot­ing, po­lice con­firmed two cars that had been parked on the road in front the house, were dam­aged.

Un­con­firmed re­ports in­di­cate over 100 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion were re­cov­ered at the scene then.

Con­duct­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise be­tween 10 am and 10 pm on Sep­tem­ber 22 - of­fi­cers of the West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force re­spond­ed to a call around 7 pm, that men with firearms were seen out­side Swan’s house at Fran­cois Street.

Led by Snr Supt Re­my, In­sp Grant and Sgt Jack - Cpls Robin­son and Khan, along with PCs Clement, Hollingsworth, See­baran, Den­nis, Ot­t­ley, Bocage, Fi­dler and Laloo - ar­rived to find the sus­pect hold­ing what ap­peared to be a Mac 11 sub-ma­chine gun with a red laser light, run­ning along a flight of stairs.

As he head­ed to­wards two of­fi­cers that were pa­trolling along a track on the ex­te­ri­or of the prop­er­ty, the sus­pect al­leged­ly point­ed the weapon at them and fired.

Ig­nor­ing the of­fi­cers’ com­mands to stop even as they iden­ti­fied them­selves, the sus­pect al­leged­ly re­spond­ed, “Wah po­lice,” even as he con­tin­ued to fire.

The of­fi­cers re­turned fire in keep­ing with the TTPS’s Use of Force Pol­i­cy.

As the sus­pect fell to the ground, the of­fi­cers went to his as­sis­tance.

They took him to the St James Med­ical Cen­tre, fol­low­ing which he was trans­ferred to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al hos­pi­tal where he un­der­went emer­gency surgery and was ward­ed un­der po­lice guard.

Of­fi­cers al­so re­cov­ered the sub-ma­chine gun at the scene.

A fur­ther search of the area was done and of­fi­cers found a red and black bag knap­sack con­tain­ing a black hood­ie, one po­lice hat, and 2 vel­cro ad­he­sive patch­es with the words PO­LICE on them.

T&T artistes as­so­ci­at­ed with the Trini­bad genre, have found them­selves in­creas­ing­ly be­com­ing tar­gets of war­ring gangs.

Trini­bad is the name that artistes call dance­hall in Trinidad, a de­riv­a­tive that was in­spired by Ja­maican dance­hall mu­sic - and fo­cus­es on the grimy side of crime, with many artistes re­leas­ing and pro­mot­ing “gun­man” tunes.

Trini­bad artistes have been un­der at­tack in T&T since Ju­ly 2020, and re­cent killings have un­der­scored the brazen at­tempts some per­sons are will­ing to go to, to get their mark.

Be­tween Ju­ly 2020 to present - sev­en Trini­bad artistes were killed in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents.