AN­NA-LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice are prob­ing a mur­der in Cunu­pia, af­ter the bul­let-rid­dled body of a man was dis­cov­ered at his home on Wednes­day.

Po­lice iden­ti­fied the vic­tim as truck dri­ver Joseph Ja­son Ap­ping, 50, of Jern­ing­ham Junc­tion Road, Cunu­pia.

He was found around 8.30 am on Wednes­day (June 11) by an of­fi­cial of JR Tyre Ser­vices.

The busi­ness, which op­er­ates out of Joseph’s home, was al­so where he was em­ployed.

Po­lice said the of­fi­cial ar­rived at work on Wednes­day and found Joseph dead on the floor.

He was in a pair of black short pants, with wounds about the body.

Six spent shell cas­ings were re­cov­ered on the floor near Joseph’s body.

He was last seen around 6.30 am on Tues­day by neigh­bours.

Res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing gun­shots in the area around 12.32 am on Wednes­day but did not ven­ture out to check.

His killing took the mur­der toll to 172 for the year.

ATMs van­dalised

A 40-year-old man from Laven­tille was ar­rest­ed af­ter four Au­to­mat­ic Teller Ma­chines (ATM) at First Cit­i­zens bank’s In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain branch were dam­aged by van­dals on Wednes­day.

Po­lice said the fe­male se­cu­ri­ty guard was on du­ty around 4 am, when she was in­formed that the glass dis­play screens of all the ATM’s had been smashed.

She alert­ed the du­ty man­ag­er, who in turn con­tact­ed the po­lice.

Fin­ger­prints col­lect­ed from the ma­chines led to the ar­rest of a 40-year-old man from Quar­ry Street, Laven­tille, on Wednes­day.

Po­lice said the dam­age amount­ed to $33,000.

Po­lice res­cue man kid­napped dur­ing FB car sale meet-up

A South Oropouche man who went to Barataria to pur­chase a car ad­ver­tised for sale on Face­book Mar­ket­place, was res­cued by po­lice af­ter be­ing kid­napped and robbed by four men.

Po­lice said the 24-year-old vic­tim, of Dow Vil­lage, South Oropouche, arranged to meet the “sell­er” at Ninth Av­enue, North Barataria, around 9.45 am on Wednes­day, for the sale of a Nis­san Wingroad car.

Up­on ar­rival, he was re­port­ed­ly ac­cost­ed by four men, all armed with firearms.

One sus­pect dealt him sev­er­al blows about the body and robbed him of his cell phone, his Nis­san Ti­i­da car and $27,500 in cash.

They lat­er placed him in the trunk of their car and took him to Sco­tia­bank at Trinci­ty Mall, where they es­cort­ed him to the ex­ter­nal ATM and forced him to with­draw cash.

Un­be­knownst to the sus­pects, po­lice of­fi­cers were in­formed of the trans­ac­tion pri­or to the vic­tim head­ing out to con­duct it. A sting op­er­a­tion was car­ried out by of­fi­cers from the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Snr Supt Car­ty, Ag/ASP Cal­len­der, ASP Bharath, Ag/In­sp Ram­s­ingh, along with mem­bers of the Mor­vant CID.

The of­fi­cers were able to res­cue the vic­tim and ap­pre­hend one sus­pect.

Of­fi­cers took the vic­tim to hos­pi­tal, where he was treat­ed and dis­charged.

The sus­pect was tak­en in­to cus­tody, where he re­mained up to yes­ter­day.

Po­lice were still search­ing for his ac­com­plices yes­ter­day.

Ban­dits make off with $800 from Sub­way in Wood­brook

The Sub­way restau­rant in Wood­brook was robbed by two armed men on Wednes­day. The men es­caped with $800 in cash along with the cell­phones be­long­ing to the five fe­male em­ploy­ees.

Po­lice said the women were at work around 3.20 pm at the branch along Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook, when the cashier heard a man be­hind her say, “No­body move, go in the back.”

Up­on turn­ing around, the woman saw two men dressed in black and one of whom had his face cov­ered.

The sus­pects or­dered the work­ers in­to the back room where they de­mand­ed mon­ey.

The em­ploy­ees were robbed of their cell­phones while one of the men or­dered the cashier to open the reg­is­ter and took the day’s sales amount­ing to $800.

The sus­pects lat­er ran out via the front door and head­ed north along Gal­lus Street, Wood­brook.