An­na-Lisa Paul

Two Mor­vant men were killed by po­lice in Barataria yes­ter­day, as they con­duct­ed a sting op­er­a­tion to ap­pre­hend sus­pects they be­lieved were us­ing so­cial me­dia sites to lure un­sus­pect­ing vic­tims to lo­ca­tions and rob­bing them.

The men, whose iden­ti­ties re­mained un­known up to late yes­ter­day, were killed around noon, while a third man who was with them was held and re­mained in po­lice cus­tody last night.

The mid­day shootout oc­curred be­tween Tenth Street and Eleventh Street, along Tenth Av­enue, Barataria—and sent em­ploy­ees of near­by busi­ness­es, as well as the busy gas sta­tion at the Mar­itime in­ter­sec­tion, scam­per­ing for cov­er.

As res­i­dents locked their doors and the gas sta­tion op­er­a­tor rolled down their met­al shut­ters, the plain­clothes of­fi­cers were quick­ly able to se­cure the scene and re­port­ed­ly re­trieved two il­le­gal firearms on the sus­pects.

The sting op­er­a­tion was car­ried out fol­low­ing more than 20 re­ports of rob­beries with­in the last three months, where all the vic­tims re­port­ed­ly made trans­ac­tions on­line via Face­book Mar­ket­place.

One of­fi­cer ex­plained that the ma­jor­i­ty of in­ci­dents cen­tred around ad­ver­tise­ments for ve­hi­cle sales which saw the sus­pects pos­ing as sell­ers. How­ev­er, when the in­tend­ed buy­ers ar­rived at spe­cif­ic venues to pur­chase the ve­hi­cle, the sus­pects would then at­tempt to rob them.

In yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent, two of­fi­cers pre­tend­ed to be in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing a car val­ued at $25,000.

The en­tire trans­ac­tion, which was set up via Mar­ket­place, saw the sus­pects in­struct­ing the “buy­ers” to come to Eleventh Street and Tenth Av­enue, Barataria to meet at noon.

The three sus­pects re­port­ed­ly parked their white B13 car at the cor­ner of Tenth Street and Tenth Av­enue, fol­low­ing which two sus­pects got out and walked the block to meet the po­ten­tial buy­ers.

It is al­leged that as the two sus­pects were talk­ing to the of­fi­cers about the pur­chase, the sus­pects at­tempt­ed to rob the un­der­cov­er of­fi­cers, who re­turned fire, killing both.

It is be­lieved that as the dri­ver heard the shootout, he got out of the idling car and walked to­wards Eleventh Street, where he too shot at the of­fi­cers, who re­turned fire, in­jur­ing him. He was lat­er tak­en to the Barataria Health Cen­tre by of­fi­cers.

Prais­ing the ef­forts of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion (NED) of­fi­cers yes­ter­day, one busi­ness own­er said, “I am glad...they out here dis­tress­ing hard-work­ing peo­ple.”

One el­der­ly woman who lives close by added, “I was scared when the shoot­ing start, it was so close. I didn’t know it was the po­lice...I thought it was these ban­dits.”

In­di­cat­ing that her house was a vir­tu­al fortress due to es­ca­lat­ing crime, the 71-year-old woman con­tin­ued, “I on­ly now find out the po­lice kill two ban­dits...I so hap­py. I does have to lock up every­thing I have. Them don’t care who they ha­rass­ing but it com­fort­ing to hear they (po­lice) catch them this time.”

A se­nior of­fi­cer al­so ap­plaud­ed the out­stand­ing ef­forts of the of­fi­cers, say­ing, “They did a mar­vel­lous job.”

None of the of­fi­cers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in yes­ter­day’s op­er­a­tion were in­jured.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er se­nior of­fi­cer said trends in­di­cat­ed that sus­pects were leav­ing rur­al dis­tricts and go­ing to ar­eas with­in the di­vi­sion, to car­ry out such trans­ac­tions by pos­ing as sell­ers be­fore rob­bing po­ten­tial buy­ers.

Back in No­vem­ber, se­nior NED of­fi­cers warned the pub­lic to be ex­treme­ly care­ful when con­sid­er­ing on­line of­fers which would pro­vide a “seem­ing­ly great op­por­tu­ni­ty to find af­ford­able, new and sec­ond-hand items.”