One man was killed and his neigh­bour wound­ed in a shoot­ing in San­ta Cruz on Fri­day evening.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 6.45 pm, Dil­lon Hug­gins, 29, of Moral­do Trace, Up­per San­ta Cruz, was talk­ing to a neigh­bour near his home when he was ap­proached by three gun­men, who opened fire on him be­fore run­ning away through a va­cant lot of land.

Hug­gins was shot sev­er­al times, while his neigh­bour Mar­vin Good­ing, 49, was shot in his right arm.

Good­ing’s rel­a­tives took him to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment be­fore po­lice of­fi­cers ar­rived on the scene and found Hug­gins where he col­lapsed and suc­cumbed to his in­juries.

Po­lice be­lieve the men who at­tacked Hug­gins were car­ry­ing as­sault ri­fles, as crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered 33 rounds of 5.56 cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion, which are used in such high-pow­ered weapons, near Hug­gins’ body.

An au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be per­formed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James once Hug­gins is of­fi­cial­ly iden­ti­fied by rel­a­tives lat­er this week.

Mean­while, one man re­mains in po­lice cus­tody af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with a se­ries of shootouts with po­lice of­fi­cers in San Juan ear­ly yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 1.30 am, two po­lice of­fi­cers were on pa­trol in Aranguez when they saw a ve­hi­cle dri­ving in the wrong di­rec­tion on a one-way street.

The dri­ver sped off up­on see­ing the po­lice car and the of­fi­cers chased the car. The ve­hi­cle stopped near the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route in Mor­vant and two men got out and shot at the of­fi­cers’ ve­hi­cle. The of­fi­cers re­turned fire but the two men man­aged to run away while the dri­ver sped off to­wards the La­dy Young Road.

An­oth­er group of of­fi­cers man­aged to force the dri­ver to stop the ve­hi­cle in Mor­vant. He re­port­ed­ly got out and shot at the of­fi­cers be­fore run­ning away.

Ad­di­tion­al of­fi­cers were dis­patched to the scene and they even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed the dri­ver. He re­mained de­tained at the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion un­til late yes­ter­day. - Derek Achong