Derek Achong

Sev­en Ari­ma res­i­dents were held on Wednes­day by po­lice mere hours af­ter an em­ploy­ee of the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Unit was robbed while on mos­qui­to-erad­i­ca­tion du­ties. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, the 26-year-old man was on du­ty on Rose Av­enue, Cara­po, Ari­ma, around 9.35 am, when his ve­hi­cle was stopped by a gun­man. Po­lice said the rob­ber pro­ceed­ed to re­lieve him of two gold chains, two rings and a cell­phone to­geth­er val­ued at $8,600. The man then es­caped on foot through some near­by bush­es. The vic­tim, of Bon Air Gar­dens, Arou­ca, made a re­port to the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion af­ter which a par­ty of of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force led by In­spec­tor Ramnaresh Seecha­ran, went to the area.

Po­lice said while on pa­trol in the Cara­po area they de­tained a sus­pect. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they searched the man and found a loaded .38 Spe­cial re­volver with five rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, they vis­it­ed sev­er­al homes and ar­rest­ed six oth­er sus­pects. Dur­ing the search the vic­tim's valu­ables were re­cov­ered. Those held were in cus­tody up to late yes­ter­day un­der in­ter­ro­ga­tion at the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion. They are ex­pect­ed to be put on iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rades lat­er to­day in con­nec­tion to the rob­bery and sev­er­al oth­ers in Ari­ma. The men are said to be be­tween 23 and 37 years old.

Al­so in­volved in the ex­er­cise were Cpl Lewis and PC Williams.