Jensen La Vende

A 36-year-old Ch­agua­nas man blew kiss­es to me­di­apho­tog­ra­pher­safter he was ar­rest­ed this morn­ing af­ter a stand­off with po­lice­for al­most two hours af­ter a breakin at 51 De­grees night­club and Town restau­rant and bar to steal.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, the man and three oth­er sus­pects went to the busi­ness­es, lo­cat­ed along Cipri­ani Boule­vard, Port-of-Spainaround 5 am, armed with cro­bars and pow­er tools. Se­cu­ri­ty guards were alert­ed to the noise­and called the po­lice.

Of­fi­cers of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, K9 Unit and Port-of-Spain CID re­spond­ed and sur­round­ed the com­pound. By the time the of­fi­cers ar­rived three of the men had al­ready fled with al­co­hol and undis­closed valu­ables. A Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty he­li­copter hov­ered over­head dur­ing the op­er­a­tion.

The fourth man, of En­deav­our Road,slith­ered in­to the ceil­ing of the build­ing. Of­fi­cers used tear gas to flush him out. Af­ter three tear gas can­is­ters were used, the sus­pect, sur­ren­dered to po­lice.

Speak­ing with the me­dia at the scene Snr Supt Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, in charge of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion told the me­dia that no ex­ces­sive force was used to flush the man out. He de­nied ear­lier­re­ports that there was a shoot-out with of­fi­cers.

Ja­cob said from the in­for­ma­tion he had re­ceived the bur­glary did not ap­pear to be an in­side job.

Cu­ri­ous on­look­ers set­tled them­selves at near­by­carparks, cell­phones in hand, tak­ing pic­tures and record­ing of the ac­tiv­i­ty. The dra­ma which last­ed about four hours in­creased traf­fic in­to the city as po­lice cor­doned off sec­tions of Cipri­ani Av­enue.

The sus­pect was at­tend­ed toe­mer­gency health physi­cian who was on stand­by, be­fore be­ing cart­ed offto the Port-of-Spain Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment where he will be ques­tioned.