Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres op­er­at­ed out of the north coast com­mu­ni­ty of Las Cuevas.

Po­lice claimed that he was linked to sev­er­al mur­ders, traf­ficked drugs, firearms and am­mu­ni­tion and feud­ed with ri­val gangs.

So what else do we know about Mieres apart from his rep­u­ta­tion as an un­der­world boss?

What was Sand­man’s

re­cent his­to­ry with the law?

• He was charged with be­ing the leader of a gang dur­ing the 2011 State of Emer­gency and lat­er freed on the ba­sis of a lack of ev­i­dence.

• Two years ago, he was charged with con­spir­a­cy to mur­der Sel­wyn “Robo­cop” Alex­is in 2014.
&emp­mar­gin;Alex­is, a gang leader from En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas was as­sas­si­nat­ed out­side his busi­ness place in 2017. The case end­ed with his death.

•In 2017, North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force of­fi­cers seized four ve­hi­cles with false num­ber plates from Mieres’ Las Cuevas prop­er­ty.

• Last year, he was grant­ed $250,000 bail af­ter he ap­peared in court on al­le­ga­tions of be­ing in the pos­ses­sion of arms and am­mu­ni­tion. That case was still pend­ing.

Was Sand­man linked

to hu­man traf­fick­ing?

Just last month Mieres’ name sur­faced in an in­ves­tiga­tive re­port done by the for­eign group Crime In­sight en­ti­tled How Venezuela ship­wrecks re­vealed sex traf­fick­ing ring.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the sink­ing of two boats sail­ing from Venezuela to T&T un­veiled a crim­i­nal ring im­pli­cat­ing high-lev­el law en­force­ment of­fi­cials in the traf­fick­ing of mi­grants and chil­dren for sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion.