An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Two days af­ter po­lice killed one man and in­jured an­oth­er dur­ing a rob­bery at­tempt in Aranguez, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion (NED) have is­sued a warn­ing to crim­i­nals to stay out of the dis­trict or deal with the con­se­quences.

The mes­sage fol­lowed Mon­day’s at­tempt­ed rob­bery of a Blue Wa­ters de­liv­ery truck along the Aranguez Main Road, around 1.30 pm.

Po­lice said the dri­ver and an­oth­er em­ploy­ee were con­front­ed by the two sus­pects, one of whom was armed, as they stopped to pur­chase a meal in the vicin­i­ty of Man­gra Trace.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said an off-du­ty po­lice­man dri­ving past saw what was hap­pen­ing and called for back­up. The dri­ver was robbed of per­son­al be­long­ings, in­clud­ing cash and valu­ables, along with the day’s cash sales, while noth­ing was tak­en from the sec­ond vic­tim.

Of­fi­cers from the NED Task Force, the In­ter-Agency Task Force, the Barataria CID and oth­er units re­spond­ed and pur­sued the three sus­pects who re­port­ed­ly shot at them, prompt­ing them to re­turn fire.

One sus­pect was shot and lat­er died at hos­pi­tal, while a sec­ond was in­jured but man­aged to es­cape along with the dri­ver of the sil­ver Nis­san Wingroad.

The sec­ond sus­pect was lat­er found in the Aranguez dis­trict, bleed­ing from gun­shot wounds.

He was ar­rest­ed and a firearm along with 14 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion was found. He was tak­en to hos­pi­tal, where he re­mained un­der po­lice guard up to yes­ter­day.

The third sus­pect was ar­rest­ed hours lat­er.

Po­lice lat­er iden­ti­fied the dead sus­pect as At­i­ba David, 22, of Ja­cobin Street, Mor­vant.

Po­lice con­firmed he was known to them and had sev­er­al pend­ing mat­ters for sim­i­lar of­fences.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­tin­u­ing.

Ap­plaud­ing the var­i­ous units of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) that pro­vid­ed sup­port dur­ing the in­ci­dent, Snr Supt of the NED, Mervyn Ed­wards, com­mend­ed the pub­lic for work­ing with law en­force­ment to en­sure the sus­pects were held.

On their crime-fight­ing plans for the up­com­ing Christ­mas sea­son, Ed­wards ad­vised, “I want to urge busi­ness peo­ple and sales­men to be ex­tra care­ful and vig­i­lant, and if you see some­thing, say some­thing.

“We the po­lice are here to serve you and make our coun­try safer and bet­ter.”

Re­gard­ing this po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that a First Di­vi­sion of­fi­cer has been as­signed to in­ves­ti­gate as per TTPS reg­u­la­tions.

Al­so prob­ing the mat­ter are of­fi­cials from the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) along­side the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA).

Supt Birch has been as­signed to lead the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.