An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

One week af­ter Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher warned the pub­lic against the mis­use of gel blaster guns, a teenag­er was al­leged­ly in­jured fol­low­ing a con­fronta­tion be­tween po­lice and sus­pects who were us­ing the toys ear­ly yes­ter­day.

Dar­ius Julien, 17, of Hug­gins Street, Ch­agua­nas, was shot on the left side of his head and was treat­ed at the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty, be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, where he was seen and dis­charged hours lat­er.

The sit­u­a­tion un­fold­ed af­ter of­fi­cers on pa­trol at 12.20 am yes­ter­day, re­ceived a call that six men armed with firearms were seen along Bri­an Av­enue, Chin Chin Es­tate, Cunu­pia.

Up­on ar­riv­ing at the lo­ca­tion, of­fi­cers spoke to a res­i­dent who point­ed to an un­fin­ished two-storey con­crete house a short dis­tance away, where the sus­pects were seen en­ter­ing.

PC Back­an re­port­ed­ly saw two men dressed in dark cloth­ing hold­ing what ap­peared to be firearms. One of the men was al­so said to have been wear­ing a skull mask.

Re­al­is­ing they were run­ning to­wards him with the ob­jects raised, Back­an al­leged­ly iden­ti­fied him­self by shout­ing, “Po­lice, po­lice, drop the gun.”

As the sus­pects dis­re­gard­ed the in­struc­tions and one of the men fired in his di­rec­tion, Back­an re­port­ed­ly fired six shots in the di­rec­tion of the men.

As the sus­pects fell to the ground, the oth­er of­fi­cers ar­rived and re­trieved the weapons, which were lat­er con­firmed to be two gel blaster guns. They al­so re­cov­ered a skull mask from one of the men. Six 9mm shell cas­ings were re­cov­ered at the scene.

Back­an was tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty for treat­ment while the two sus­pects were tak­en in­to cus­tody.

As of­fi­cers se­cured the scene and wait­ed for back­up to ar­rive, a re­port was re­ceived from peo­ple at a house par­ty ap­prox­i­mate­ly 120 me­tres away from where the shoot­ing oc­curred.

That re­port in­di­cat­ed Julien had been shot in the head dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his home yes­ter­day, the shak­en teenag­er said, “I was lim­ing with some friends and af­ter a while, I got up to go and use the wash­room. When I got up, it did have some fel­las around play­ing with the gel blasters. When I look­ing to go in­side to use the wash­room...as I step through the door, I just feel an in­stant shock like if you get elec­tro­cut­ed and while I walk­ing to go in the bath­room, cause I didn’t even know I get shoot, a friend of mine ask­ing me if is blood and me be­ing con­fused, ask­ing she what, what you mean by blood? And when I watch meh jer­sey, cause is a white shirt I had on...is just blood. And that’s when they say po­lice shoot­ing.”

Jok­ing that he man­aged to es­cape se­ri­ous in­jury by the skin of his teeth as he lift­ed his plaits and point­ed to the bloody spot be­hind his left ear, which had been stitched up, Julien said, “The bul­let still in my head.”

Asked what he in­tend­ed to do, an an­gry rel­a­tive said, “He had­da wait to see what is the po­lice next move, what them go­ing and do about that. He have no next move ... he cyar move, he have no next move.”

In­di­cat­ing they would be seek­ing le­gal ad­vice, Julien’s fam­i­ly said, “Once they not com­ing for­ward and do­ing noth­ing about this, we will be go­ing to a lawyer. He in a house and get shoot just so ... in­side a house yuh know.”

Thank­ful her son’s life had been spared, Julien’s moth­er, Ezan Bel­grave-Ros­tant, said, “I was sur­prised and shocked be­cause I know where I left him was very a safe place, so when they call and told me that the po­lice shoot Dar­ius in his head, I was very shocked and sur­prised.”

She said she was wait­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to con­tact the fam­i­ly with valid an­swers.

It was on­ly on De­cem­ber 28, that Hare­wood-Christo­pher ex­pressed con­cerns that the gel blaster toy guns posed a po­ten­tial threat to pub­lic safe­ty be­cause they re­sem­ble re­al firearms and are pro­hib­it­ed.

She warned, “The pub­lic is re­mind­ed that us­ing any item, whether re­al or im­i­ta­tion, to threat­en, in­tim­i­date, or harm oth­ers con­sti­tutes a crim­i­nal of­fence un­der the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”