Ak­ile Si­mon

The lone sur­vivor in last Thurs­day's in­ci­dent, in which three men were shot and killed by po­lice dur­ing a shoot-out in Mor­vant, has spo­ken to po­lice for the first time since his ar­rest. The 31-year-old sus­pect, of Sec­ond Cale­do­nia in Mor­vant, spoke with of­fi­cers of the North-East­ern Di­vi­sion on Sat­ur­day, while in cus­tody at Mor­vant Po­lice Sta­tion. He is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate to­day, charged with pos­ses­sion of a Glock pis­tol, a .38 re­volver, am­mu­ni­tion and shoot­ing at po­lice with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm. Po­lice said the man told them he was grate­ful to be alive, and promised to change his life.

But Joel Ro­main, 19, a for­mer na­tion­al ju­nior sprint­er, Ker­win "Lal" Joseph, 24, and Akee Ca­ballero, 27, all of Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, were not as for­tu­nate as this sus­pect. The vic­tims died while un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery at hos­pi­tal. An­oth­er man, who was not with them, but was shot in the leg by po­lice while run­ning through a track, re­mained ward­ed in sta­ble con­di­tion at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Au­top­sies are ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed to­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre. Short­ly af­ter the shoot­ing, po­lice said the sus­pect was tak­en to hos­pi­tal, where he was treat­ed for shock.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said af­ter the sus­pect's car had crashed near the Church on the Rock, the de­tained sus­pect jumped out of the car, held his hands in the air and sur­ren­dered. While be­ing tak­en to Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, po­lice said the man kept feel­ing var­i­ous parts of his body to see if he was shot. "Ap­par­ent­ly, he was suprised he was not in­jured and he was alive.

"We are not in the busi­ness of killing peo­ple. Our du­ty is to 'pro­tect and serve' the pub­lic. 'We try our ut­most best to ap­pre­hend sus­pects with­out the use of gun­fire," an of­fi­cer as­signed to the North-East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force told The Guardian yes­ter­day.

Po­lice al­so dis­put­ed oth­er news­pa­per re­ports (not the Guardian) which claimed that three firearms were re­cov­ered, a high-speed chase with the sus­pects start­ed in Mal­oney, the de­tained sus­pect was shot and crit­i­cal­ly in­jured, and the car used by the sus­pects was stolen. Po­lice said those re­ports were false. Of­fi­cers said they were on mo­bile pa­trol along the East­ern Main Road, near Mor­vant Junc­tion, around 11 pm, when they spot­ted the men in the ve­hi­cle and called on them to sur­ren­der. A high-speed chase en­sued, fol­lowed by a shoot-out at Cale­do­nia. Po­lice said they had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that the oc­cu­pants of the ve­hi­cle were in­volved in the mur­der of Ryan Rivers, 24, who was shot and killed near his Sama­roo Vil­lage, Ari­ma, home, one hour ear­li­er.