Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Po­lice are still search­ing for the sus­pect who evad­ed them on Mon­day dur­ing a brazen shootout along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

The dra­ma un­fold­ed amid af­ter­noon traf­fic, leav­ing mo­torists and pas­sen­gers trau­ma­tised.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the head of the High­way and Traf­fic Pa­trol Unit, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Wayne Mys­tar, said, “It was noth­ing strange. Po­lice of­fi­cers of­ten find them­selves en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties as what hap­pened on Mon­day and I want to com­mend the of­fi­cers for be­ing there at that par­tic­u­lar time to ac­tu­al­ly in­ter­cept that ve­hi­cle that was tak­en away at gun­point”.

Around 3:45 pm on Mon­day, po­lice in­ter­cept­ed a stolen ve­hi­cle on the high­way when its oc­cu­pants at­tempt­ed to es­cape and fired shots at the of­fi­cers.

They re­turned fire, killing one of the sus­pects while the oth­er sus­pect ran in­to a near­by bushy area in the vicin­i­ty of the Cou­va Med­ical and Mul­ti-Train­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

Mys­tar said po­lice are still search­ing for the sus­pect.

“Some peo­ple stopped and they were video­tap­ing. Re­mem­ber, po­lice of­fi­cers are trained as it re­lates to the use of force pol­i­cy. We look at cer­tain things in an ex­change of gun­fire like the back­drops and so on, how­ev­er, crim­i­nals don’t ob­serve those and fire in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly,” Mys­tar warned.

He ad­vis­es cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue dri­ving, once traf­fic is not ob­struct­ed.

But, what should you do if you’re in traf­fic and a shootout en­sues?

Ac­cord­ing to Law En­force­ment and Com­bat Con­sul­tant, Paul-Daniel Na­hous, “What I would rec­om­mend is to get in the crouched po­si­tion as much as you can, wind up the win­dow un­der­stand­ing that a car door doesn’t cov­er against a mod­ern pro­jec­tile. A car door is mere­ly con­ceal­ment how­ev­er, in that po­si­tion you are mak­ing your­self a small­er tar­get.”

How­ev­er, if an of­fi­cer ap­proach­es your ve­hi­cle win­dow in an ac­tive shootout, he said it’s im­por­tant to know what to do.

He sug­gest­ed, “You need to do is show them that there is noth­ing in your hands and what I rec­om­mend peo­ple do whether it be in a shoot­ing sit­u­a­tion or a reg­u­lar traf­fic stop is put your hands in the 10 and two po­si­tion and put them high­er even to show the of­fi­cers that your hands are there then it’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

“Any­time your hands are hid­den, that will be seen as a threat to the of­fi­cer so step one is you show them your hands, com­ply with all le­gal in­struc­tions giv­en to you un­til the sce­nario plays out,” Na­hous ex­plained.

He re­mind­ed cit­i­zens that po­lice of­fi­cers al­so have the right to pro­tect them­selves.

“Re­mem­ber if you’re an of­fi­cer and look­ing on from the out­side, the po­lice of­fi­cer has a fam­i­ly as well and with all the train­ing and all the equip­ment you still have to safe­guard your life as an of­fi­cer,” he said.

If a shoot­ing takes place while you’re in a pub­lic space, Na­hous sug­gest­ed run­ning in­to a near­by build­ing and alert­ing oth­ers of the in­ci­dent.

“If there is nowhere ac­ces­si­ble for you to go in for what­ev­er rea­son you should go any­where where you’ll get cov­er,” he added.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Mys­tar said while of­fi­cers can­not pre­dict when a crime will hap­pen, they will con­tin­ue to main­tain a high pres­ence to de­ter crim­i­nals.

“There will be a strong pres­ence in and about by all the di­vi­sions on the high­ways so when you see us do not com­plain. Some­times you say you’re not see­ing of­fi­cers but now you’re go­ing to be see­ing them in full force,” Mys­tar as­sured.