SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Five men, who were held when they tried to break in­to Pay­less Shoe Store in down­town Port-of-Spain ear­li­er this week, yes­ter­day ap­peared in court charged with ware­house break­ing and lar­ce­ny.

Shawn Si­mon, 22, of Phase 4, Beetham Gar­dens; Al­pha Black­man, 32, of 17D Beetham Gar­dens; Bartholomew Black­man, 30, of Up­per 6th Av­enue, Barataria; David Sylvester, 39, of Mai Street, Beetham Gar­dens; and Ka­reem Pierre, 19, of Grass Street, Curepe, ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court.

Si­mon faced the ad­di­tion­al charge of pos­ses­sion of a weapon and am­mu­ni­tion.

PC Be­dasee charged the men.

Ear­li­er this week, a 19-year-old man was ar­rest­ed af­ter he be­came trapped on the roof of a build­ing on Fred­er­ick Street. He had to be as­sist­ed by both po­lice and fire of­fi­cers, af­ter he ap­par­ent­ly fell through the roof of Town Cen­tre Mall and got stuck in be­tween two build­ings on Cha­con Street, Port-of-Spain.

Four oth­er men were found on the rooftop, al­leged­ly with a gun and am­mu­ni­tion. Of­fi­cers al­so re­port­ed­ly found a black bag con­tain­ing sev­er­al sneak­ers, slip­pers, and cloth­ing, as well as house­break­ing im­ple­ments on the rooftop.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion said fol­low­ing this re­cent in­ci­dent and oth­ers, there will be an in­crease in pa­trols down­town dur­ing and out­side of busi­ness hours, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the Christ­mas sea­son ap­proach­ing.

The of­fi­cer said this will be done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Port-of-Spain City Po­lice.