Mark Bas­sant

Ral­phie Rop­er, who has been de­scribed as T&T's most want­ed man and had been on the run for al­most 15 years, was shot and killed by po­lice in Mar­aval ear­ly this morn­ing.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia Rop­er was asleep in a camp in a forest­ed area of Cameron Hill just af­ter 4 am when po­lice, act­ing on a tip-off, de­scend­ed on the camp. It is al­leged that Rop­er shot at the po­lice who re­turned fire fa­tal­ly wound­ing him.

Rop­er had sev­er­al out­stand­ing war­rants and firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences pend­ing be­fore the court. In an in­ter­view with this jour­nal­ist two years ago he claimed he had in­for­ma­tion on sev­er­al crooked po­lice of­fi­cers in the West­ern Di­vi­sion and that sev­er­al of them were on his pay­roll.

A se­nior of­fi­cer said al­though Rop­er was want­ed for sev­er­al crimes, he had se­crets about many po­lice of­fi­cers in the West­ern Di­vi­sion. There were al­le­ga­tions made by Rop­er about sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers run­ning com­pet­ing drug blocks in the area. A high-rank­ing po­lice of­fi­cer con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that these al­le­ga­tions had some mer­it and of­fi­cers were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Sev­er­al at­tempts had been made over the last two years to cap­ture Rop­er who re­mained elu­sive. He of­ten hid in the forest­ed hills of Cameron and "knew the area like the back of this hand," a res­i­dent who grew up with Rop­er said.

In the past, law en­force­ment agen­cies had tried to cap­ture Rop­er in this area, but on every oc­ca­sion, he evad­ed them.

In Jan­u­ary 2020, of­fi­cers from the West­ern Di­vi­sion went to the Cameron area in Mar­aval to cap­ture Rop­er af­ter re­ceiv­ing a tip-off but a shootout en­sued in which one man was shot and killed. Rop­er es­caped. Sev­er­al months ago, he was shot in the arm dur­ing an armed con­fronta­tion with the po­lice.

He man­aged to es­cape then but on Wednes­day morn­ing his long run from the po­lice end­ed.