JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

On the same day the T&T Prison Ser­vice be­gan re­leas­ing de­tainees held un­der the State of Emer­gency, two men were killed in an al­leged shootout af­ter po­lice at­tempt­ed to de­tain them un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, of­fi­cers went to Sandel­ing Boule­vard, Mal­oney, to ex­e­cute a PDO for Tris­ton Mar­tin, whom they de­scribed as a known gang mem­ber al­leged­ly linked to sev­er­al firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences.

Po­lice said up­on ar­riv­ing at the lo­ca­tion, of­fi­cers en­coun­tered Mar­tin, 19, and Tyrique De Coteau, 23, who was want­ed in con­nec­tion with sev­er­al rob­beries in the North­ern Di­vi­sion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed that the of­fi­cers came un­der gun­fire and re­turned fire, in­jur­ing both men. Mar­tin and De Coteau were tak­en to the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, where they lat­er died. Po­lice al­so said three firearms were re­cov­ered at the scene.

How­ev­er, neigh­bour Leela Ma­hase yes­ter­day dis­put­ed the po­lice ac­count. She said the men had re­cent­ly vis­it­ed a po­lice sta­tion af­ter hear­ing they were be­ing linked to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. Ac­cord­ing to Ma­hase, they were ques­tioned and sub­se­quent­ly re­leased.

Ma­hase claimed the men were asleep when po­lice ar­rived and opened fire. She said they had been stay­ing at her daugh­ter’s home at the re­quest of one of their grand­moth­ers.

“Why you had to kill them? They were sleep­ing. You didn’t ask them any­thing, you just shoot them up,” she al­leged.

Ma­hase al­so claimed that po­lice called in a ri­ot squad af­ter rel­a­tives be­gan ques­tion­ing of­fi­cers about the in­ci­dent.

Po­lice, how­ev­er, re­port­ed that res­i­dents be­came un­ruly and hurled racial in­sults at of­fi­cers, prompt­ing them to re­quest ad­di­tion­al sup­port from the Guard and Emer­gency Branch.

Ma­hase main­tained that dur­ing the week the men stayed with her daugh­ter, they caused no prob­lems.

“They were qui­et. I didn’t know them to be trou­ble­mak­ers. What I do know is that their names were be­ing called in cer­tain things, and they went to the po­lice sta­tion to clear their names. If they were guilty, they would not have gone to the sta­tion. They went on their own, and their grand­moth­er met them there and ac­com­pa­nied them,” she said.