Six Venezue­lan na­tion­als were held while at­tempt­ing to en­ter the coun­try il­le­gal­ly on Tues­day night. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) praised its of­fi­cers, along with the T&T Coast Guard (TTCG), for the in­ter­cep­tion.

The TTPS said act­ing on in­tel­li­gence re­ceived from the Na­tion­al Radar Cen­tre, a TTCG team from the Ce­dros base, in­clud­ing Pet­ty Of­fi­cer Seecha­ran, Able Sea­man King and Lead Elec­tri­cian Adams in­ter­cept­ed a sus­pi­cious ves­sel off the coast of Ica­cos around 10 pm on Tues­day.

Po­lice said the pirogue, which was head­ing to­wards Trinidad’s south-west­ern shores, was found to be car­ry­ing six Venezue­lans.

Po­lice said the in­di­vid­u­als were prompt­ly hand­ed over to the Ce­dros Po­lice Sta­tion, where PC Valdez and his team ini­ti­at­ed im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter.

The TTPS re­mind­ed cit­i­zens that bor­der se­cu­ri­ty is a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and urged any­one with in­for­ma­tion on sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty to con­tact the po­lice.

Mean­while, two Venezue­lan na­tion­als were ar­rest­ed and one re­volver and a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion were seized, short­ly af­ter an at­tempt to steal from two men in Pe­nal on Wednes­day.

Po­lice said one of the vic­tims re­port­ed to of­fi­cers that he was ply­ing his ve­hi­cle for hire around 6 am with one male pas­sen­ger in the front seat, when he picked up two oth­er male pas­sen­gers. He said on reach­ing Clarke Road, Pe­nal, one of the men hit him on the back of the head with a met­al ob­ject. The vic­tim told po­lice he stopped the car and was at­tempt­ing to ex­it the ve­hi­cle when one of the sus­pects point­ed a gun at him.

Dur­ing the in­ci­dent, a strug­gle en­sued be­tween the dri­ver and the armed sus­pect, re­sult­ing in the dri­ver be­ing shot in his left thigh. The front seat pas­sen­ger ran and was able to alert two se­cu­ri­ty guards about the in­ci­dent. The two sus­pects were held a short time lat­er and one Smith and Wes­son re­volver loaded with two rounds of am­mu­ni­tion was seized.

In the West­ern Di­vi­sion, Task Force of­fi­cers con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise in Diego Mar­tin be­tween 11.30 am and 2.30 pm on Wednes­day.

Po­lice said dur­ing the ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers pro­ceed­ed to the cor­ner of North Post and Blue Basin Roads, where they con­duct­ed a search that re­sult­ed in the dis­cov­ery of one firearm loaded with a mag­a­zine.

Over in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise from 2 pm to 8 pm. Sev­er­al build­ings in the Up­per Nel­son Street Plan­nings were searched, re­sult­ing in the dis­cov­ery of quan­ti­ties of cannabis, co­caine, 61 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion and one ri­fle mag­a­zine.

The op­er­a­tion was spear­head­ed by ACP Hazel, Snr Supt Sook­er, Supt Ram­sook, ASP Singh and in­clud­ed of­fi­cers of the Joint Op­er­a­tions Task Force and Ca­nine Branch. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing in­to all the in­ci­dents.