RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian. co.tt

An off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer nar­row­ly es­caped in­juries when a thief opened fire on him while flee­ing a crime scene on Sat­ur­day.

Cpl Ramesh Badal, 60, who is at­tached to the Siparia Po­lice Sta­tion, was sit­ting in a San­ta Fe at Latchoos Road, Pe­nal, when he saw the thief run­ning down the street. Badal’s neigh­bour Sham Frank, 52, was in close pur­suit.

The ban­dit fired a shot at Badal and then jumped in­to a wait­ing B-13 Sen­tra and es­caped. The front of Badal’s ve­hi­cle was dam­aged and the thief got away.

In a state­ment to po­lice, Frank said he was sit­ting in a parked Nis­san Fron­tier when the thief ran up to him and an­nounced a holdup. The thief yanked open the door and placed the gun to Frank’s head. The thief ripped off Frank’s en­tire pock­et on the left rear of his pants and stole a bag con­tain­ing $12,000 in cash then ran away. A de­scrip­tion of the man was pro­vid­ed.

ASP Pe­ter Ramdeen and PC Khaleel of the Pe­nal Po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

An­oth­er Princes

Town fam­i­ly

beat­en, robbed

Po­lice are still search­ing for four men who beat and robbed a Princes Town busi­ness­man and his fam­i­ly on Fri­day.

The as­sault on the Ram­per­sad fam­i­ly was the third to have oc­curred on the same street with­in a month.

Ram­per­sad, 65, the pro­pri­etor of Ram­per­sad's Bar at Iere Vil­lage, Princes Town, told po­lice that around 6 am he was be­hind his house when the sus­pects am­bushed him. Three of the as­sailants were masked and the fourth wore a red ban­dan­na over his mouth and two of them had guns and one a cut­lass.

They took Ram­per­sad to a room down­stairs where they beat him. They then stole an undis­closed sum of cash which rep­re­sent­ed the day’s sales from the bar as well as the NL­CB pay­ments.

Ram­per­sad tried to raise an alarm but was hit with a gun butt on his face. The sus­pects fled in a blue Volk­swa­gen Jet­ta. A team of of­fi­cers led by PC Bas­deo vis­it­ed the scene but no sus­pects were held.

On Au­gust 19, sev­en ban­dits stormed in­to a house at Palmyra and beat the own­ers and their 12-year-old son, who was sched­uled to write the SEA ex­ams the next day. They ran­sacked the house and stole over $10,000 in elec­tron­ics and cash. Five sus­pects were lat­er ar­rest­ed and charged for the of­fence.

In late Au­gust, a hard­ware own­er was al­so held at gun­point and robbed of over $4,000 in cash and valu­ables.

Mar­i­jua­na,

guns seized

Po­lice ex­e­cut­ed raids and road­blocks in the Pa­lo Seco area over the week­end and re­cov­ered three shot­guns and al­most two ki­los of mar­i­jua­na.

Of­fi­cers led by Se­nior Supt Bran­don-John, Supt Rame­sar, ASP Pe­ter Ramdeen, In­sp Si­mon, Sgt Craw­ford and Cpl Mor­ris went to Beach Road where they raid­ed sev­er­al known drug blocks. The of­fi­cers then went to a busy area about 50 me­tres away from Beach Road where they found the shot­gun, car­tridges and mar­i­jua­na. No one was ar­rest­ed.

In a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent, of­fi­cers from the Ce­dros Po­lice Sta­tion were on pa­trol du­ty when they saw a man car­ry­ing a brown cro­cus bag. He dropped the bag and ran when he saw the po­lice ve­hi­cle. The of­fi­cers chase him in­to a busy area off Syfoo Trace, Granville, where they found a mar­i­jua­na plan­ta­tion com­pris­ing of 800 ful­ly grown trees and 300 seedlings. The sus­pect man­aged to es­cape. The en­tire plan­ta­tion, which had trees and seedlings val­ued at $100,000, was de­stroyed. No one was ar­rest­ed.