Po­lice of­fi­cers were forced to use a taser and even­tu­al­ly had to shoot a men­tal­ly-ill man, af­ter he at­tacked them with a knife twice.

The 29-year-old man, of Saut D’eau Road, Paramin, was re­port­ed by res­i­dents around 6.25 pm on Tues­day, af­ter he was seen set­ting fire to his house at Wall Trace, Paramin.

Of­fi­cers on pa­trol ar­rived at the scene and found the man stand­ing a short dis­tance away with a knife in his hand. He al­leged­ly re­fused to drop the knife and was tasered when he be­gan run­ning to­wards the of­fi­cers.

The man re­port­ed­ly pulled the prongs from his body and jumped off a 12-foot precipice to es­cape.

While on mo­bile pa­trol lat­er that night, of­fi­cers went to Sad­dle Road, Mar­aval, where the man was seen near the Pierre Road Su­per­mar­ket, still armed with the knife, threat­en­ing by­standers.

The law­men re­port­ed­ly ap­proached the sus­pect and or­dered him to drop the knife, but he took off run­ning to­wards a bridge on Sad­dle Road.

The of­fi­cers chased af­ter him and when the sus­pect stopped and charged at them, one of the of­fi­cers fired two shots in the sus­pect’s di­rec­tion, hit­ting him in the left thigh.

Still re­fus­ing to sur­ren­der, the man ran to­wards the Mar­aval Po­lice Sta­tion, where an of­fi­cer tased him a sec­ond time. An­oth­er of­fi­cer dis­charged two pep­per spray can­is­ters in the di­rec­tion of the sus­pect—all of which did not stop him.

The man was even­tu­al­ly cor­nered un­der a shed where he was sub­dued and dis­armed. He was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he was treat­ed and ward­ed in sta­ble con­di­tion.