Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

The search of a house in Ari­ma on Tues­day af­ter­noon, led to the shoot­ing death of a man af­ter he re­port­ed­ly shot at po­lice.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers from the North­ern Di­vi­sion and North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion went to a house in Dar­will Gar­dens, Uni­tyville, Ari­ma, around 12 25 pm to ex­e­cute a search war­rant.

As of­fi­cers en­tered the house, they saw Matthew Gar­cia, al­so known as ‘Ham­mers,’ point­ing a gun at them. The of­fi­cers claimed that Gar­cia shot at them and they re­turned fire, hit­ting him.

Po­lice took Gar­cia to the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, where he was de­clared dead.

Po­lice re­port­ed­ly found a pis­tol and ex­tend­ed mag­a­zine with 20 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion at the house.

Po­lice al­so found an­oth­er man at the house who was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion pend­ing fur­ther en­quiries.

Gar­cia’s death was the lat­est po­lice killing over the past two weeks.

Last Fri­day, Forstin Au­gus­tus, a men­tal­ly ill man, was shot and killed by po­lice af­ter he re­port­ed­ly at­tacked of­fi­cers who vis­it­ed his Coryal home in re­sponse to a do­mes­tic dis­tur­bance.

On Mon­day, Mu­da­da Cyrus and Ju­nior Per­reira were al­so shot and killed by po­lice af­ter they re­port­ed­ly shot at of­fi­cers who tried to search a house on San Pe­dro Road, Llu­en­go Vil­lage, St Joseph. Two guns were found near their bod­ies.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via email yes­ter­day, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) main­tained that the use of lethal force should be a last re­sort to the po­lice and high­light­ed oth­er means of de­fus­ing po­ten­tial­ly vi­o­lent sit­u­a­tions.

The au­thor­i­ty not­ed that from Jan­u­ary 1 to Oc­to­ber 3, there have been 36 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings com­pared to 41 for the same pe­ri­od last year.

The PCA said, “The in­crease in po­lice in­volved shoot­ings is a con­cern­ing trend that re­quires a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis to iden­ti­fy the root caus­es of the prob­lem. It is im­por­tant to note that the use of dead­ly force by po­lice of­fi­cers is a last re­sort and should on­ly be used when it is nec­es­sary to pro­tect them­selves or oth­ers from im­mi­nent harm.”