Derek Achong

The hero­ic ac­tion of an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer in pre­vent­ing a shoot­ing in Curepe yes­ter­day was praised by sev­er­al se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Po­lice Con­sta­ble Shawn Thomas was walk­ing along Curepe Junc­tion around 4.30 am when he no­ticed two men ar­gu­ing.

One of the men re­port­ed­ly drew a firearm from his knap­sack and point­ed it in the di­rec­tion of the oth­er. Thomas quick­ly in­ter­vened and iden­ti­fied him­self as a po­lice of­fi­cer. Af­ter be­ing alert­ed the sus­pect at­tempt­ed to flee the scene but was fol­lowed on foot by Thomas, who ar­rest­ed him a short dis­tance away.

Thomas, who is as­signed to the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion, did not have a ser­vice firearm in his pos­ses­sion. The sus­pect was tak­en to the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion where he re­mained up to late yes­ter­day. A loaded .22 cal­i­bre pis­tol and a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na were dis­cov­ered on the sus­pect.

The firearm was sent to the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre in St James where bal­lis­tic analy­sis will be done to de­ter­mine whether it was used in any re­cent shoot­ings. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the 27-year-old sus­pect gave po­lice of­fi­cers two ad­dress­es, one in Ca­roni and the oth­er in John John, Laven­tille.

He will par­tic­i­pate in sev­er­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rades lat­er to­day be­fore crim­i­nal charges are laid. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.