A Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer, work­ing as a ride-share dri­ver, es­caped death af­ter he was at­tacked with a knife dur­ing a job in San Fer­nan­do.

The SRP told po­lice that around 3 am on Ju­ly 9, he ac­cept­ed a job to trans­port two women and a man from Na­pari­ma-Ma­yaro Road, Co­coyea Vil­lage, to a lo­ca­tion he could not re­call at the time.

The of­fi­cer was dri­ving along Simp­son Brown Ter­race when they asked to ex­it the ve­hi­cle. How­ev­er, he told them that this was not the des­ti­na­tion re­quest­ed through the ride share app and that he was fol­low­ing the di­rec­tions on Google Maps. The sus­pects be­came ag­gres­sive, bang­ing on the back of the dri­ver’s seat. As the of­fi­cer stopped the ve­hi­cle, he felt a burn­ing sen­sa­tion in his neck and then re­alised he was bleed­ing. When he got out of the car, the male sus­pect at­tacked him with a knife, wound­ing him on his left cheek, chin and right palm. The sus­pects then ran off.

The dri­ver made his way to the Mon Re­pos Po­lice Sta­tion, where a pass­er-by alert­ed of­fi­cers that a man was bleed­ing in­side a ve­hi­cle. The in­jured of­fi­cer was then tak­en to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for med­ical treat­ment. Po­lice were lat­er in­formed that his in­juries were not life-threat­en­ing.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

De­com­pos­ing body found

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the dis­cov­ery of the de­com­pos­ing body of a PH dri­ver at his home in Pe­nal.

The man iden­ti­fied as Jef­fer­son Grif­fith, 62, of Mathu­ra Av­enue, was last seen alive around 9 am on Ju­ly 7. Po­lice said his body was dis­cov­ered by his sis­ter, who went to vis­it him around 5 pm on Ju­ly 10. She told of­fi­cers she de­tect­ed a foul odour em­a­nat­ing from the house. When she en­tered through the open back door, she found Grif­fith’s body ly­ing on a mat­tress in the liv­ing room. He was wear­ing on­ly a pair of box­ers.

Of­fi­cers from the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

—Sascha Wil­son