Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­per­vlle@guardian.co.tt

Cunu­pia res­i­dents were full of praise for the po­lice hours af­ter they awoke to the sound of gun­fire yes­ter­day morn­ing, as the usu­al­ly qui­et agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty was the scene of a chase and shootout be­tween ban­dits and po­lice of­fi­cers, which led to the deaths of four sus­pects and the ar­rest of two oth­ers. The in­ci­dent stemmed from a home in­va­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to a TTPS me­dia re­lease, the in­ci­dent be­gan around 3.30 am when a 70-year-old farmer was at­tacked at his Cunu­pia home by eight masked ban­dits, one of whom had a gun.

The man was tied up and had his cell­phone stolen along with $1,120.

A re­port was made and of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, the po­lice Home In­va­sion Team (HIT) and the Reg­i­ment were mo­bilised, chas­ing the ban­dits, be­fore even­tu­al­ly in­ter­cept­ing them at Ram­nar­ine Trace, off Es­mer­al­da Road near a gro­cery.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers were shot at by the ban­dits, but re­turned fire, killing three of the sus­pects and ar­rest­ing two oth­ers.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said three men es­caped at that time; how­ev­er, one sus­pect was shot and killed by po­lice short­ly af­ter mid­day.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene, of­fi­cers from var­i­ous units were seen walk­ing through fields and bushy ar­eas in the agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads off Es­mer­al­da Road, Charles Trace, Samp­son Trace and oth­ers near­by as the search con­tin­ued for ban­dits who fled.

Po­lice sources speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said there was sus­pi­cion that some of the ban­dits who es­caped cap­ture scat­tered to dif­fer­ent neigh­bour­hoods near­by, hid­ing in derelict hous­es or aban­doned farm­ing struc­tures.

But even as joint teams of po­lice and sol­diers scoured near­by lots of land, sev­er­al farm­ers and field hands con­tin­ued their work un­fazed by the height­ened po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty.

One farmer, who asked not to be named, said he was pleased with the swift re­sponse of the po­lice as he re­called hear­ing the first vol­ley of gun­fire just be­fore 4 am.

The man who de­scribed him­self as a “ca­reer gar­den­er” said he was re­lieved that the sus­pects were ar­rest­ed, not­ing that res­i­dents and farm­ers have been liv­ing in fear of crim­i­nals for months, as ban­dits were known to nav­i­gate back­roads and fields to stage at­tacks and es­cape un­de­tect­ed.

“It wasn’t al­ways like this... on­ly re­cent­ly we start­ed to see more and more crim­i­nal things with rob­beries and that kind of thing. First, it was small with a few crops and thing miss­ing, but peo­ple start­ed to get robbed more of­ten, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter dark.

“What they (ban­dits) do is cut holes in the fences and the barbed wire and walk through the fields to get to the hous­es near­by where they do their rob­beries, then they try to hit as many dif­fer­ent hous­es as pos­si­ble in a sin­gle night.

“We re­al­ly fed up and we made re­ports this is why we hap­py that this came and hap­pened. Look I even cut let­tuce to give to the po­lice of­fi­cers to show them how grate­ful I am for the work they did.”

The farmer said sev­er­al Venezue­lans work­ing for him and oth­er farm­ers in the area have al­so been tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals, with the lat­est in­ci­dent hap­pen­ing ear­ly on Fri­day morn­ing when a mi­grant was at­tacked as he left his home and his cell­phone was stolen.

He said the ban­dits showed lit­tle dis­cre­tion in who they tar­get­ed.

Mean­while, an­oth­er farmer in an op­po­site field point­ed to dis­card­ed cloth­ing left in a ravine near his crops, which he claimed be­longed to the ban­dits but left be­hind as they tried to change their ap­pear­ance to blend in with res­i­dents near­by.

The man said his field, which is bor­dered by barbed wire to the west, was one of those ar­eas used by the ban­dits to sneak in and stage their at­tacks be­fore es­cap­ing.

“It’s two ac­cess roads they take. This area and an­oth­er track fur­ther down the road there. From what I’ve gath­ered, these guys are com­ing from Fer­nan­do Lane, which is just a few me­ters away.

“There are a few peo­ple who are from out­side the area who are com­ing in, but there’s al­so a lot of lo­cals in­volved in this fool­ish­ness. They pull gun and thing for farm­ers al­ready, it’s not nice.”

Crime com­ing to Cunu­pia

When con­tact­ed, Cunu­pia Coun­cil­lor Richard Sukdeo said he was al­so pleased with the po­lice re­sponse to the in­ci­dent, not­ing that re­ports of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty hap­pened in cy­cles, with in­ter­mit­tent lulls be­tween pe­ri­od­ic spikes in crime.

He, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted that the area had grad­u­al­ly be­come more un­safe.

“Cunu­pia is be­com­ing an area that isn’t gen­er­al­ly safe, as it was about five or six years ago.

“It’s very un­pre­dictable, but the sig­nal it’s send­ing is that crime is com­ing in­to Cunu­pia be­cause we re­al­ly have to be very care­ful, be­cause you can nev­er tell... peo­ple can­not at this point in time con­tin­ue to live as they nor­mal­ly would.

“They would con­tin­ue to have to look over their shoul­der to see what is hap­pen­ing.”

Sukdeo said he felt there was a lack of re­sources at the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion to ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and hoped that this could be ad­dressed.

Top Cop warns ban­dits

In voicenotes is­sued through the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit in the af­ter­math of the in­ci­dent, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro com­mend­ed po­lice and sol­diers for what he de­scribed as their “dis­ci­plined” re­sponse to the in­ci­dent.

He al­so ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of those killed in the in­ci­dent, but main­tained that it was ev­i­dence the po­lice were ca­pa­ble of ad­dress­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“Let this stand as a clear mes­sage: once you choose vi­o­lence against law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, the TTPS will find you, pur­sue and stop you.

“The days of crim­i­nals mov­ing with im­puni­ty are over. If you in­vade homes, you will face the full weight of the law. Crime has con­se­quences and the TTPS will en­sure that those con­se­quences ar­rive quick­ly.”

Gue­var­ro con­firmed that as of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, an ac­tive man­hunt was un­der­way for two re­main­ing sus­pects, as he ad­vised res­i­dents of Ram­nar­ine Trace, Es­mer­al­da Road, Samp­son Road and Charles Trace to be vig­i­lant while se­cur­ing their homes and re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty.

While in the area, DCP Op­er­a­tions Suzette Mar­tin was seen co­or­di­nat­ing po­lice re­spons­es along­side the head of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion, ACP Richard Smith.