Derek Achong

A Laven­tille teenag­er was shot dead by po­lice yes­ter­day fol­low­ing an ear­ly morn­ing rob­bery in Tu­na­puna. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 4 am, a cou­ple walk­ing on Balt­haz­ar Street in Tu­na­puna re­port­ed to po­lice be­ing robbed of $1,000 by five oc­cu­pants of a sil­ver Nis­san Wingroad.

An all-points bul­letin was is­sued by the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion and the ve­hi­cle was spot­ted a short while lat­er on the East­ern Main Road near the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope. Of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force (NDTF) led by Sgt Bas­deo Sinanan re­spond­ed and a high speed chase en­sued.

On reach­ing Tenth Street, Barataria, the dri­ver of the car lost con­trol and crashed in­to a wall near to the Mar­itime Com­plex. Po­lice said the oc­cu­pants of the car shot at them. They re­turned fire. Af­ter a five-minute gun bat­tle, the sus­pects sur­ren­dered to po­lice. One of the sus­pects, who po­lice said sus­tained mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds, was rushed to hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

That sus­pect was iden­ti­fied late yes­ter­day af­ter­noon as An­der­son Leid, 18, of East­ern Quar­ry, Laven­tille. Leid was iden­ti­fied by the po­lice crim­i­nal data­base, po­lice sources said. A 23-year-old woman from Barataria, a 17-year-old from Des­per­lie Cres­cent, Laven­tille, and a 20-year-old man from San­ta Cruz were ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers.

The sus­pects were tak­en to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion where they re­mained de­tained last night un­der in­ter­ro­ga­tion. While un­der ques­tion­ing at the sta­tion the sus­pects re­vealed that the fifth sus­pect in the rob­bery fled the scene dur­ing the shoot-out with po­lice.

Around 2 pm yes­ter­day in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­ceived a re­port of a man pre­sent­ing him­self at the St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal with gun­shot wounds to his hand and leg. When the law­men vis­it­ed the hos­pi­tal, the sus­pect al­so of Laven­tille, ad­mit­ted to be­ing in­volved in the in­ci­dent ear­li­er. Up to late yes­ter­day, that sus­pect re­mained ward­ed at hos­pi­tal un­der po­lice guard in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

The sus­pects are ex­pect­ed to be placed on iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rades over the week­end in con­nec­tion to yes­ter­day's rob­bery and a string of oth­er re­cent re­ports along the East-West Cor­ri­dor. ACP Ter­ry Young and In­spec­tor Ramnaresh Seecha­ran vis­it­ed the scene. Cpl Clin­ton Bernard of the Tu­na­puna CID is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.