A 45-year-old man was hos­pi­talised af­ter be­ing shot at a friend’s home in Moru­ga on Fri­day night.

The vic­tim, Aaron Grap­pie, of New Grant, was shot around 10 pm on Sat­ur­day while sit­ting un­der a house at St Mary’s Vil­lage, Moru­ga Road.

Po­lice re­port­ed that a white Toy­ota Aqua stopped in front of the house and a man of African de­scent, de­scribed as light brown in com­plex­ion, tall, and wear­ing a white hood­ie and long black pants, ex­it­ed from the rear pas­sen­ger seat armed with a firearm.

The sus­pect ran to­wards Grap­pie and fired sev­er­al shots. Grap­pie ran to the rear of the house, where he col­lapsed a short dis­tance away af­ter be­ing struck in the right hand and right knee.

He was tak­en to the Princes Town Health Fa­cil­i­ty and lat­er trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he re­mains in sta­ble con­di­tion.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered three spent 9mm shell cas­ings and one live 9mm round at the scene. Of­fi­cers from the Moru­ga Po­lice Sta­tion vis­it­ed, and in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.

Sep­a­rate­ly, po­lice car­ried out a se­ries of an­ti-crime ex­er­cis­es across the South­ern Di­vi­sion on Sat­ur­day and in­to the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day. The op­er­a­tions were con­duct­ed in Moru­ga, Table­land, Princes Town, Bar­rack­pore, St Mary’s, Mon Re­pos, Gas­par­il­lo, Mara­bel­la, St Mar­garet’s, La Ro­maine and San Fer­nan­do.

The ex­er­cis­es in­clud­ed road­blocks, stop-and-search op­er­a­tions, bar search­es, rov­ing traf­fic en­force­ment, grid pa­trols and VTRAP op­er­a­tions along the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way. Dozens of ve­hi­cles and peo­ple were searched, and mul­ti­ple stop-and-search forms were com­plet­ed.

One ar­rest was made in Moru­ga dur­ing a road­block for breach of a pro­tec­tion or­der. Po­lice re­port­ed that no firearms, drugs or oth­er il­le­gal items were found dur­ing the ex­er­cis­es and that all op­er­a­tions were con­duct­ed with­out in­ci­dent.