The sus­pect in the New Or­leans truck crash that killed 10 peo­ple and in­jured 30 rev­ellers in New Or­leans on New Year’s Day was killed af­ter a fire­fight with po­lice, law en­force­ment of­fi­cials told the AP.

They say gun­men broke in­to his Laven­tille Road home around 1:30 am on New Year’s Day and opened fire.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the brazen mur­der of at­tor­ney-at-law Ran­dall War­ren Hec­tor, 43, who was fa­tal­ly shot last night af­ter leav­ing the Stan­more Av­enue Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Church.

A to­tal of 46 peo­ple were de­tained by the au­thor­i­ties dur­ing the first 24 hours of the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Some 80 pen­sion­ers from Beetham Gar­dens were treat­ed to an end-of-year lun­cheon by the TTPS yes­ter­day.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James yes­ter­day crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the an­nounce­ment of a na­tion­wide State of Emer­gency (SoE), say­ing he could un­der­stand why the Op­po­si­tion Leader sub­se­quent­ly la­belled the crime fight­ing tac­tic as “po­lit­i­cal gim­mick­ry.”

For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Sub­has Pan­day, has raised con­cerns about some as­pects of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) reg­u­la­tions, ar­gu­ing they em­pow­er po­lice to abuse cit­i­zens with­out le­gal re­course.

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Car­la Kan­ga­loo has called on the na­tion to re­flect on the chal­lenges of the past year while em­brac­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth and re­new­al in the year ahead.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has called on cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go to em­brace the New Year with re­newed hope, uni­ty, and a com­mit­ment to over­com­ing the chal­lenges fac­ing the na­tion.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has called on cit­i­zens to re­flect on the chal­lenges of 2024 and take de­ci­sive ac­tion to cre­ate a bet­ter fu­ture in 2025.

The Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom, and Cana­da are among coun­tries that have is­sued trav­el ad­vi­sories to their cit­i­zens af­ter the de­c­la­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency in T&T.

Two of Cari­com’s 15 mem­ber states—Trinidad and To­ba­go and Haiti—have de­clared state of emer­gen­cies (SoE) eight days apart due to ris­ing mur­ders and gun and gang vi­o­lence.