The search for two men who opened fire on po­lice of­fi­cers in Tu­na­puna on Mon­day night end­ed yes­ter­day af­ter they vol­un­tar­i­ly sur­ren­dered to au­thor­i­ties.

The sus­pects, aged 22 and 20, of Up­per Fair­ley Street, Tu­na­puna, pre­sent­ed them­selves at the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion around 10.30 am and were tak­en in­to cus­tody.

Of­fi­cers of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion (NCD) Task Force East and West, along with the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID), had con­duct­ed a tar­get­ed op­er­a­tion to lo­cate the men. Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the sus­pects around 3 pm, of­fi­cers led by As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Rishi Singh and co­or­di­nat­ed by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Vern­ly Gift dis­cov­ered an AR-15 ri­fle with one mag­a­zine in a drain on East­man Street, Tu­na­puna, hid­den un­der bush­es.

The orig­i­nal shoot­ing oc­curred around 7.45 pm on Mon­day at the cor­ner of Main­got Road and Fair­ley Street. An of­fi­cer sus­tained a bro­ken right leg and back in­juries, while a civil­ian was shot in the right shoul­der.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in charge of Op­er­a­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, con­firmed that the of­fi­cer was in “good spir­its” at the hos­pi­tal and sched­uled for surgery, while the civil­ian had been dis­charged.

De­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as iso­lat­ed, po­lice said they do not be­lieve it rep­re­sent­ed any tar­get­ed at­tack on of­fi­cers per­form­ing their du­ties.

Re­ports in­di­cate that three of­fi­cers from the NCD were on mo­bile pa­trol in a marked ve­hi­cle when they re­spond­ed to a re­port of an as­sault in­volv­ing a woman. As they in­quired at the home of the al­leged per­pe­tra­tor and re­turned to their ve­hi­cle across Fair­ley Street, sev­er­al loud ex­plo­sions rang out.

Two armed men re­port­ed­ly emerged from a near­by yard and opened fire. PC Phillip was struck in the right leg and back, while a pedes­tri­an walk­ing past was hit in the right shoul­der. The of­fi­cers took cov­er and re­turned fire in ac­cor­dance with the Use of Force Pol­i­cy, but the sus­pects man­aged to flee the scene.

Both in­jured in­di­vid­u­als were rushed to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mount Hope, where Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and Mar­tin vis­it­ed them. —A Paul

Mar­tin added, “We wish to as­sure our of­fi­cers that the Ser­vice stands ful­ly be­hind them. Their safe­ty, wel­fare, and op­er­a­tional sup­port re­main para­mount as they con­tin­ue to car­ry out their du­ties.” She urged the pub­lic to re­main calm, vig­i­lant, and co­op­er­a­tive with po­lice, and to pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion that could as­sist in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. - An­na-Lisa Paul