Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A prison of­fi­cer shot and killed an armed in­trud­er dur­ing a home in­va­sion in Freeport on Thurs­day night.

While his three ac­com­plices es­caped emp­ty-hand­ed, the sus­pect was lat­er car­ried out of the home in a body bag by un­der­tak­ers.

The house is di­vid­ed in­to two sec­tions, with the prison of­fi­cer, his wife and their two chil­dren liv­ing in one sec­tion, while his 71-year-old moth­er-in-law and oth­er rel­a­tives live in the oth­er.

The in­ci­dent hap­pened short­ly af­ter 7.30 pm, when the four in­trud­ers re­port­ed­ly en­tered the prop­er­ty.

At the home yes­ter­day, the prison of­fi­cer’s 47-year-old wife re­called the ter­ri­fy­ing or­deal on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

She said the ban­dits first forced their way in­to the sec­tion of the house where her moth­er lives.

“They pull open the door like they liv­ing here,” she said.

The men de­mand­ed her moth­er’s phone, but she told them it was a TV re­mote. At one point, one of the men al­leged­ly point­ed a gun at her head and or­dered her to get on the ground.

She re­fused, and the in­trud­er then told her to sit down and re­main qui­et. The men searched the rooms.

The woman said they al­so point­ed a gun at the head of her 16-year-old niece af­ter she re­fused to give him her phone, caus­ing her to scream.

Hear­ing the com­mo­tion, the wife said she walked across the house and through a door­way, where she saw one of the men ap­proach­ing.

Her 50-year-old hus­band al­so came out to in­ves­ti­gate.

“And when he see the fel­low com­ing, he said, ‘move aside’, and that is when the fel­low kicked down the door be­cause I had closed it in. As he came in, my hus­band just fire, and he fall down right there.”

She was not sure where he was shot or how many times, but she heard three gun­shots.

“We was fear­ful for our safe­ty be­cause he had this gun point­ing, com­ing down to us.”

In the po­lice re­port, the prison of­fi­cer said the ban­dit was armed with a gun and that he be­came fear­ful for his life.

When po­lice ar­rived about 20 to 25 min­utes lat­er, the sus­pect was dead.

The woman said it was the first time she had ever ex­pe­ri­enced any­thing like that.

“It is very ridicu­lous be­cause, I mean peo­ple can­not just be run­ning in your place just so. You try­ing to live your life your way and the crim­i­nals just com­ing to do you what you feel. It wasn’t nice.”

While her fam­i­ly was not in­jured, she said the in­ci­dent was trau­mat­ic for every­one.

“See­ing the chil­dren bawl­ing and cry­ing and thing. My son he’s a big man, he was cry­ing be­cause he thought his fa­ther got shot. It was not nice see­ing the chil­dren cry­ing and bawl­ing.”

Her 25-year-old son and 15-year-old daugh­ter were al­so home.

Po­lice showed her a pho­to­graph of the sus­pect, but she said she did not recog­nise him and had no idea why her fam­i­ly was tar­get­ed.

The po­lice told her the sus­pect was not known to them and that they had not yet iden­ti­fied him.

The sus­pect’s iden­ti­ty had not been dis­closed by po­lice up to last evening. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.