RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

A 34-year-old Bel­mont man was shot and wound­ed while walk­ing in the Bel­mont area on Thurs­day, in what is be­ing de­scribed as a dri­ve-by shoot­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 5:30 pm, the vic­tim was walk­ing along Ar­gyle Street in Bel­mont when a ve­hi­cle ap­proached him, and its oc­cu­pants opened fire on him. The car then sped off.

The vic­tim re­port­ed­ly was shot the left thigh and groin.  He was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for med­ical at­ten­tion.

Mean­while, res­i­dents and com­muters trav­el­ling in and out of East Port-of-Spain and Bel­mont are be­ing asked to ex­er­cise cau­tion, as po­lice sus­pect an up­surge in gang-re­lat­ed shoot­ings in the area.

At about 11 am on Tues­day June 8th, po­lice re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that two ri­val gangs were en­gaged in a gun­fight along Ox­ford Street.  How­ev­er, no one was in­jured, nor was any­one killed.

The Po­lice Ser­vice con­firmed that a par­ty of of­fi­cers car­ried out search­es af­ter the shoot­ing but was un­suc­cess­ful in mak­ing any ar­rests.

The TTPS is ad­vis­ing peo­ple wish­ing to vis­it the area, or those pass­ing through, to be vig­i­lant and to con­tact the po­lice im­me­di­ate­ly if there are any un­usu­al sight­ings of gun-tot­ing men, or gath­er­ings at any street cor­ner or plan­ning de­vel­op­ment.

The Po­lice Ser­vice al­so is giv­ing as­sur­ances that mo­bile pa­trols will be in­creased, in a bid to quell the up­surge in crime and gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.