Jensen La Vende

Four men are now dead af­ter be­ing shot by po­lice dur­ing two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents be­tween Wednes­day night and yes­ter­day morn­ing, as law en­force­ment of­fi­cers clamped down on crime in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad.The killings took the toll of peo­ple killed by po­lice for the year to 11.The dead men were iden­ti­fied as An­tho­ny Hospedales, 18, Satro­han Ramd­hanie, 23, Je­re­my Clu­nis, 23, and Gilbert Brown, 25.In the first in­ci­dent on Wednes­day, of­fi­cers from the St Mar­garet's Po­lice Sta­tion, Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force and High­way Pa­trol killed two ban­dits dur­ing a shootout af­ter they in­ter­cept­ed a ve­hi­cle the men had ear­li­er stolen at gun­point from a taxi-dri­ver in Cou­va.

Po­lice said around 10.30 pm, Shawn Hu­sain was work­ing his Nis­san Blue­bird Syl­phy from Cou­va to San Fer­nan­do when he picked up the men, pos­ing as pas­sen­gers, along the South­ern Main Road, Cou­va.When Hu­sain reached Point-a-Pierre Hill, one of the men asked to be put out. As he stopped the car, one of them pulled out a gun and an­nounced a hold-up.They pro­ceed­ed to rob him and two oth­er pas­sen­gers of $1,060, two cell­phones, to­geth­er val­ued $9,700, and his car, val­ued at $127,000.A re­port was made at the St Mar­garet's Po­lice Sta­tion and an all points bul­letin was put out.

Two guns seized

Po­lice on pa­trol lat­er spot­ted the car parked near the Clax­ton Bay land­fill.How­ev­er, be­fore the of­fi­cers could make an ar­rest they were fired up­on by the car­jack­ers, who then jumped in­to the ve­hi­cle and sped off. The of­fi­cers fol­lowed the ve­hi­cle in a high speed chase along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, in which mem­bers of the High­way Pa­trol soon joined.The of­fi­cers first at­tempt­ed to in­ter­cept the car at Chase Vil­lage but the ban­dits opened fire on them again and man­aged to elude them.PC Ram­sey was shot in the right arm dur­ing that at­tack. The pur­suit fi­nal­ly end­ed when the ban­dits crashed in­to a wall sev­er­al miles lat­er along Xavier Street, off the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road, Ch­agua­nas.

When po­lice moved to the car and opened it, they found Hospedales, of Sun­flower Dri­ve, Dyette Trace, Cunu­pia, and Ramd­hanie, of Plan­ta Dri­ve, Dyette Es­tate, Cunu­pia, in­side the car suf­fer­ing from gun­shot wounds. They were tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty where they were pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.A Jen­nings pis­tol and one mag­a­zine with four rounds of am­mu­ni­tion was found in the car.PC Ram­sey is cur­rent­ly ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Com­plex, Mt Hope.About sev­en hours lat­er, Clu­nis and Brown were al­so killed by law­men dur­ing a shootout at Mc­Don­ald Street Ex­ten­sion, Chi­napoo, Mor­vant.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, po­lice went to a house to ex­e­cute a search war­rant for arms and am­mu­ni­tion. While ap­proach­ing the house, they were fired up­on by un­known per­sons and they re­turned fire.On check­ing the house the of­fi­cers found two men with gun­shot wounds. They were tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where they were pro­nounced dead on ar­rival. They were sub­se­quent­ly iden­ti­fied as Clu­nis and Brown, both of Chi­napoo, Mor­vant.The of­fi­cers re­cov­ered a mi­ni Uzi sub-ma­chine gun. Act­ing ASP Hazel of the Mor­vant Po­lice Sta­tion is con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.Po­lice said both men ap­peared in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates Court on Mon­day on gun-re­lat­ed charges.