A 21-year-old man of Ari­ma will ap­pear at the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates’ Court to­day, af­ter he was charged with Rob­bery with Vi­o­lence.

Si­mon El­li Smith was charged on Mon­day af­ter of­fi­cers con­duct­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to an in­ci­dent where two men al­leged­ly robbed a taxi dri­ver.

Ac­cord­ing to a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia re­lease, around 2:24 pm on Jan­u­ary 2nd, 2023, a taxi dri­ver was pro­ceed­ing along Cara­po Road, in his white Hon­da City ve­hi­cle, when a pas­sen­ger seat­ed in the back seat placed him in a choke hold, bran­dished a knife, and an­nounced a rob­bery.

A sec­ond man then robbed the dri­ver of a quan­ti­ty of cash. The dri­ver be­came fear­ful for his life and a strug­gle en­sued, re­sult­ing in the dri­ver sus­tain­ing sev­er­al lac­er­a­tions to his hand and face and a stab wound to his stom­ach. The dri­ver then lost con­trol of the ve­hi­cle, which col­lid­ed in­to a light pole.

The car spun and flipped be­fore com­ing to a stop in the bush­es a few feet away from the road­way. The sec­ond man ran off, while the first sus­pect along with the dri­ver sus­tained in­juries and re­mained on the scene. The dri­ver called 999 and sev­er­al of­fi­cers on pa­trol re­spond­ed in quick time

Up­on ar­rival, of­fi­cers met the dri­ver who in­formed them of the rob­bery, and point­ed to the sus­pect, who was sub­se­quent­ly de­tained. The dri­ver and sus­pect were con­veyed to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty where they were treat­ed for their in­juries, and lat­er both men were trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex (EWM­SC) for fur­ther treat­ment.

The sus­pect was dis­charged from the EWM­SC on Jan­u­ary 9th, 2023, and was con­veyed to the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion, where he was sub­se­quent­ly charged for the of­fence of Rob­bery with Vi­o­lence. An ar­rest is im­mi­nent with re­spect to the oth­er sus­pect.