Po­lice are search­ing for three men who beat and robbed a To­ba­go man of his Nis­san Fron­tier and cell phone af­ter the vic­tim went to Laven­tille to meet a woman.

Po­lice re­port­ed that the 38-year-old agreed to meet the woman at Priz­gar Lands, Laven­tille on Tues­day, in per­son af­ter chat­ting on­line. 

When he got to the meet­ing point around 5.45 pm, three men ap­proached the man. 

One of the men had a gun and beat the vic­tim with the butt of the gun be­fore pulling him out of the van and tak­ing it along with his Ap­ple iPhone 11 Pro Max. 

The vic­tim was lat­er tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal by of­fi­cers of the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion who re­spond­ed to the re­port.

Of­fi­cers lat­er found the van at St Barbs, Laven­tille. 

The sus­pects were all de­scribed as African de­scent and about five feet, six inch­es tall. 

One is stock­i­ly built, dark-skinned, short hair. He was wear­ing a red, white and blue Jer­sey and black three-quar­ter pants.

The sec­ond sus­pect is tall, slim built, dark com­plex­ion, corn­row hair­style and was wear­ing a white and black jer­sey and short pants.

The third man and gun­man is slim and dark-skinned. There was no de­scrip­tion giv­en about what he was wear­ing.

In a me­dia re­lease on Tues­day, po­lice warned the pub­lic about meet­ing with peo­ple they met on so­cial me­dia.

The re­lease said: "We urge the pub­lic to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion when ar­rang­ing and at­tend­ing in-per­son meet­ings with in­di­vid­u­als met on­line."

The re­lease added that po­lice da­ta shows crim­i­nals are us­ing so­cial me­dia and dat­ing apps to com­mit crimes.

"These plat­forms are be­ing eas­i­ly ex­ploit­ed by in­di­vid­u­als with crim­i­nal in­tent. It is es­sen­tial for all users to be vig­i­lant and take nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions."