RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Hours af­ter the at­tempt on the life of a prison of­fi­cer in El Do­ra­do, Tu­na­puna, res­i­dents were still reel­ing in fear yes­ter­day, as they re­alise that they no­ticed strange ve­hi­cles and peo­ple lurk­ing around in the area days be­fore.

As a re­sult, they are send­ing a warn­ing to res­i­dents of all com­mu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly where prison of­fi­cers re­side, to be on the safe side and look out for any strange ve­hi­cles and peo­ple and re­port it to the po­lice.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, one res­i­dent who wished that he not be iden­ti­fied told the Guardian Me­dia that they were left trau­ma­tised fol­low­ing Tues­day night’s brazen at­tack.

“Com­ing to think of it, there were strange peo­ple seen in the area in and out days be­fore and we be­lieve that they were check­ing out the area car­ry­ing out their own ob­ser­va­tions. They knew where the prison of­fi­cer lived so they were watch­ing move­ments, peo­ple around, ins and out maybe the fastest way out or the best way to do their thing,” the res­i­dent said.

“But yea, in this tim­ing you have to look out for strangers and strange ve­hi­cles. Take down the num­ber plates and even take pho­tos of the peo­ple or watch them good so you could call the po­lice on them. Let’s try and stop this fool­ish­ness that hap­pen­ing. It have every­body jumpy and fright­en.”

At the shop where the in­ci­dent took place, its steel doors re­mained tight­ly shut and bro­ken pieces of glass were seen on the ground. The house con­nect­ed to the shop was al­so locked up tight as no one ap­peared to be home.

A few hous­es up to the ad­ja­cent cross street was the home of the po­lice of­fi­cer, 28, who was wound­ed in the in­ci­dent. He did not speak but ac­cord­ing to his fa­ther, they were told not to say much on it as “a se­ri­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion is cur­rent­ly go­ing on so we have to be very care­ful.”

He, how­ev­er, cleared the air, say­ing his son is cur­rent­ly on sus­pen­sion hav­ing been last as­signed to the Port-of-Spain Task Force Op­er­a­tional Team and there­fore had no gun on him to shoot at the as­sailants. How­ev­er, the fa­ther said de­spite this, his son at­tempt­ed to de­fend the life of his friend (the prison of­fi­cer) and was shot and wound­ed in the hand. The of­fi­cer, who was at home at the time, re­mained in­side his home and did not speak.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial po­lice re­port, at about 7.30 pm the 32-year-old pris­ons of­fi­cer, who is the pro­pri­etor of a par­lour at Clemen­ty Street, El Do­ra­do, was con­duct­ing sales at his shop when he saw three men come out a dark-coloured SUV and start fir­ing at him. The prison of­fi­cer drew his li­censed firearm and re­turned fire. The sus­pects then re-en­tered their ve­hi­cle and fled the scene. The prison of­fi­cer then no­ticed that his friend, the po­lice of­fi­cer, who was lim­ing at the shop, had been shot in the hand.

Of­fi­cers of the Tu­na­puna CID, North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force-West and Port-of-Spain Task Force re­spond­ed and re­cov­ered two pis­tols, each with ex­tend­ed mag­a­zines with a quan­ti­ty of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion.

The scene was processed by North­ern Di­vi­sion’s CSI, who re­cov­ered 24 .223 shell cas­ings and 29 9mm shell cas­ings.

On Mon­day, pris­ons of­fi­cer Nigel Jones was killed in Siparia in full view of his three-year-old daugh­ter. Four days be­fore, his col­league, prison of­fi­cer Trevor Ser­rette, was killed in Va­len­cia.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Tues­day, the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion said there was a hit list in which 13 of­fi­cers were marked to be killed be­fore Christ­mas. It is al­leged that the death threats were made by a high-pro­file pris­on­er cur­rent­ly housed at the Wayne Jack­son Build­ing at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca. The in­mates there claim they are be­ing abused by masked prison of­fi­cers among oth­er ill-treat­ment.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob yes­ter­day said they were aware of the “hit list” and as­sured the TTPS will be “pro­vid­ing even more as­sis­tance, in­clu­sive of pa­trols, to prison of­fi­cers, es­pe­cial­ly those who are soft tar­gets.”

Ja­cob said po­lice of­fi­cers had al­ready ap­proached some of the prison of­fi­cers and giv­en them ad­vice.

“We’ve had sit­u­a­tions of such at­tacks in the past, where per­sons are tar­get­ed, not for do­ing any­thing wrong them­selves, but sim­ply be­cause they are in a pro­fes­sion, and they can be eas­i­ly lo­cat­ed,” Ja­cob said.

“They are tar­get­ed be­cause they are read­i­ly found, and there­fore they are used as a means to send a mes­sage. But again, I want to em­pha­sise that we are treat­ing with this, we have un­cov­ered in­tel, and we are work­ing to­wards ar­rests even as we speak.”

Po­lice yes­ter­day said a sus­pect was held in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent af­ter he turned up at a hos­pi­tal seek­ing treat­ment for a gun­shot wound.

He was at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope last night un­der po­lice guard af­ter re­ceiv­ing treat­ment for a wound to his back. The bul­let is re­port­ed­ly lodged in his spine.