Po­lice have ar­rest­ed two in­di­vid­u­als and seized two firearms along with am­mu­ni­tion dur­ing sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in the East­ern Di­vi­sion.

In a me­dia re­lease, TTPS said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3:30 pm yes­ter­day, Sgt James, PC Cox, and PC Charles of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Task Force (NOTF) were on mo­bile pa­trol when they re­ceived a trans­mis­sion from the Po­lice Com­mand Cen­tre re­gard­ing armed men in the area.

Up­on ar­riv­ing at the Oropouche Road, Va­len­cia ad­dress, the of­fi­cers ob­served a man with a mul­ti-coloured back­pack stand­ing near the road­way.

The man glanced in the di­rec­tion of the of­fi­cers and im­me­di­ate­ly fled on foot.

The of­fi­cers alight­ed from the ve­hi­cle, gave chase, and suc­cess­ful­ly ap­pre­hend­ed the man. A search of his back­pack re­port­ed­ly re­vealed an AR-15 ri­fle fit­ted with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing 18 rounds of 5.56mm am­mu­ni­tion.

The items were seized, and the 18-year-old from Oropouche Road, Va­len­cia, was ar­rest­ed along with a 26-year-old from the same ad­dress. Both in­di­vid­u­als were tak­en to the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post for fur­ther en­quiries.

Ear­li­er that day, in a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent, PC Caines of the Spe­cial­ist Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit was at a bar on East­ern Main Road, Va­len­cia, when he was in­formed of an armed in­di­vid­ual in the es­tab­lish­ment.

PC Caines then ob­served the in­di­vid­ual at­tempt­ing to make a pur­chase at the bar while hold­ing his waist in an awk­ward man­ner.

He ap­proached the man, iden­ti­fied him­self with his Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ID card and badge, and in­formed him of the in­for­ma­tion he had re­ceived. PC Caines at­tempt­ed to con­duct a search of the in­di­vid­ual, but the man be­gan to re­sist, re­sult­ing in a strug­gle.

Dur­ing the al­ter­ca­tion, PC Caines suc­cess­ful­ly re­trieved a met­al and poly­mer pis­tol from the in­di­vid­ual’s waist­band.

The man then fled the es­tab­lish­ment, but PC Caines was able to re­cov­er the firearm, which con­tained six rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion.

The weapon was tak­en to the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post for fur­ther pro­cess­ing. En­quiries in­to these mat­ters are on­go­ing.