Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Po­lice Con­sta­ble Ron­nie Sama­roo who foiled a rob­bery at­tempt, when he went to ex­e­cute an ar­rest war­rant in Mare­bel­la yes­ter­day morn­ing was shot at close range in his stom­ach with his own ser­vice re­volver by the ban­dit he was at­tempt­ing to ar­rest. Po­lice of­fi­cers, who came to Sama­roo's res­cue, fired at the shoot­er, Jodie Par­ris, 37, killing him on the spot.

Sama­roo and Par­ris were both rushed to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Par­ris was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival while Sama­roo, 27, of Harb­ha­jan Hill, Debe, was rushed to the emer­gency room, where he un­der­went surgery. He was lat­er ad­mit­ted to the In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) in a se­ri­ous con­di­tion.

Scores of ven­dors, pedes­tri­ans and peo­ple on their way to work, wit­nessed the in­ci­dent around 7.45 am in the busy com­pound of the JTA Su­per­mar­ket. Of­fi­cial po­lice re­ports stat­ed Par­ris and an­oth­er man were about to rob a Kiss truck which was de­liv­er­ing goods to the su­per­mar­ket, when Sama­roo, a war­rant of­fi­cer spot­ted him, while dri­ving along the South­ern Main Road.

Un­aware, that a rob­bery was about to take place, Sama­roo and PC Cu­pid, both at­tached to the Mara­bel­la Task Force, stopped to ex­e­cute the war­rant and ar­rest Par­ris. They said Par­ris spent most of his life in and out of prison With hand­cuffs in hand, Sama­roo at­tempt­ed to ar­rest Par­ris, who re­sist­ed and at­tacked the of­fi­cer.

A strug­gle en­sued and in the melee, Par­ris re­port­ed­ly grabbed Sama­roo's firearm from his hol­ster and shot him in the stom­ach. The oth­er man fled the scene. The oth­er of­fi­cer called for back­up from the near­by po­lice sta­tion. As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (South) Fitzroy Fred­er­icks, Su­per­in­ten­dent Hack­shaw and In­spec­tor An­tho­ny Charles, to­geth­er with oth­er of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the scene.

Par­ris' hat and one side of his shoes were left ly­ing on the ground as crime scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors col­lect­ed ev­i­dence. A woman wit­ness­es, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said she mis­tak­en­ly thought the vol­ley of gun­shots was fire­crack­ers un­til she saw peo­ple run­ning from the scene.

She added; "When I watch, the man shoot the po­lice. I hear the po­lice bawl out, scream­ing in pain. The next po­lice of­fi­cer jump in to de­fend his col­league and shoot the Ras­ta­man." The sec­ond man, who was with Par­ris, ran away, she said.

Ven­dors who op­er­ate near­by, said Par­ris was a bad man who ter­rorised hard-work­ing, in­no­cent peo­ple and they were glad he was dead.

"He used to dis­tress peo­ple," one said. Mean­while, Sama­roo's rel­a­tives flocked to the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, pray­ing for his safe re­cov­ery. His younger broth­er, Neil, 23, re­called his fam­i­ly's trau­ma when he got a call say­ing he had been shot.

"My moth­er called Ron­nie's cell­phone and some­one else an­swered. They tell she Ron­nie just got shot," he added.

Neil said the doc­tors told them the surgery was suc­cess­ful but they were fright­ened be­cause he was in the ICU. He said his broth­er, who has three years in the ser­vice, was very com­mit­ted to his job. He said he was trans­ferred to Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion about two months ago.

"He nev­er get in­to in any shoot­ing or any­thing like this. He was in raids be­fore but noth­ing this se­ri­ous ever hap­pened," Neil added. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.