Derek Achong

A 35-year-old for­mer life­guard was ar­rest­ed by po­lice fol­low­ing the seizure of two il­le­gal firearms and a large cache of am­mu­ni­tion in Mara­cas on Thurs­day af­ter­noon. Re­ports said around 3 pm of­fi­cers of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force (NEDTF) led by In­sp Roger Alexan­der went to the sus­pect's house. They found a Tau­rus .380 pis­tol and Glock 9 mm pis­tol as well as 300 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion.

They al­so re­cov­ered 9.5 ki­los of com­pressed mar­i­jua­na with a street val­ue of more than $100,000. The own­er of the house, who was last em­ployed as a life­guard at beach­es along the North Coast, was ar­rest­ed and lat­er charged with sev­er­al counts of arms and am­mu­ni­tion pos­ses­sion. He was al­so charged with mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing. The charges were laid by Sgt Vic­tor of the Mara­cas Po­lice Sta­tion. Mean­while, a 17-year-old school­boy was ar­rest­ed on gun re­lat­ed charges al­so.

The teen was ar­rest­ed af­ter the same team of po­lice of­fi­cers raid­ed his home on Sala­mat Street, El So­cor­ro,on Thurs­day night. Dur­ing that search the of­fi­cers found a .38 re­volver with 16 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the teen is the son of a well known gang-leader in Port-of-Spain. Po­lice said the teen has a crim­i­nal record. Both men are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate on Mon­day. Sgt Cor­nelius Samuel, Cpl Sunil Bharath, PCs Jerome Gor­don and Clint Dass were al­so in­volved in the ex­er­cise.