An­na-Lisa Paul &

Shane Su­perville

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro yes­ter­day sent a stern warn­ing to in­di­vid­u­als who con­tin­ue to par­tic­i­pate in home in­va­sions across the coun­try.

“Do not go in peo­ple house! Is not yours, don’t go and look for it,” the CoP said.

He added, “To those who be­lieve that they can in­vade peo­ple’s homes, con­front my of­fi­cers and ter­rorise com­mu­ni­ties, the mes­sage is un­mis­tak­able, armed crim­i­nal­i­ty will be met with firm and im­me­di­ate po­lice re­sponse.”

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, as he com­ment­ed on the sec­ond killing of a home in­va­sion sus­pect in as many days.

De­scrib­ing the events as “un­for­tu­nate,” Gue­var­ro said, “This un­der­scores for me, the ex­treme dan­ger posed by armed of­fend­ers who tar­get peo­ple in their homes.”

He added, “The TTPS will not al­low home in­va­sions to be­come a norm in T&T, and any­one en­gag­ing in these crimes should un­der­stand that there is a risk, and that risk is high, and the re­sponse of the TTPS will be swift and the con­se­quences will be ac­cord­ing to your ac­tions.”

He urged per­sons to be more vig­i­lant and re­port sus­pi­cious sight­ings and ac­tiv­i­ties to the po­lice at once.

Again urg­ing per­sons to stay out of hous­es that do not be­long to them, Gue­var­ro warned, “Is not yours, don’t go and look for it.”

In the lat­est in­ci­dent, po­lice in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion shot and killed a sus­pect­ed ban­dit af­ter claim­ing he point­ed a gun at them when con­front­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to a TTPS me­dia re­lease, of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to the re­port of a home in­va­sion in Ch­agua­nas around 3.35 am yes­ter­day.

On reach­ing the area, po­lice no­ticed a man crouched be­tween a parked car and bush­es.

Of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly called out to the man, who then point­ed a gun at them.

The of­fi­cers then called on the man to drop the gun but he re­fused and of­fi­cers shot him.

The wound­ed sus­pect was tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he was de­clared dead.

The po­lice re­port­ed that a pis­tol and a cord­less grinder were found and seized.

The sus­pect re­mained uniden­ti­fied up to press time yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia was told by sources that the in­ci­dent took place along the low­er Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al res­i­dents and busi­nes­sown­ers said while they saw so­cial me­dia re­ports of the in­ci­dent, they were not sure ex­act­ly where it took place.

The in­ci­dent came one day af­ter 34-year-old Ab­dul­lah Joseph, alias “Dun­go”, was shot and killed dur­ing an­oth­er con­fronta­tion with po­lice at a house on Pe­tersville Road, Cunu­pia, af­ter of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to an al­leged home in­va­sion.

Joseph’s rel­a­tives have firm­ly de­nied the of­fi­cial po­lice ac­count of the in­ci­dent, as they doubt­ed that Joseph was in pos­ses­sion of a gun.

The rel­a­tives ad­mit that while he dealt with drug prob­lems and was ar­rest­ed in the past for pos­ses­sion of drugs, he was not vi­o­lent. They al­so said he act­ed as the care­tak­er for the res­i­dence, as the own­ers live abroad.