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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Highway shooter still at large

by

Bavita Gopaulchan
1269 days ago
20220113
Police officers on the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway, Couva after the shootout between police and bandits, on Monday.

Police officers on the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway, Couva after the shootout between police and bandits, on Monday.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Po­lice are still search­ing for the sus­pect who evad­ed them on Mon­day dur­ing a brazen shootout along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

The dra­ma un­fold­ed amid af­ter­noon traf­fic, leav­ing mo­torists and pas­sen­gers trau­ma­tised.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the head of the High­way and Traf­fic Pa­trol Unit, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Wayne Mys­tar, said, “It was noth­ing strange. Po­lice of­fi­cers of­ten find them­selves en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties as what hap­pened on Mon­day and I want to com­mend the of­fi­cers for be­ing there at that par­tic­u­lar time to ac­tu­al­ly in­ter­cept that ve­hi­cle that was tak­en away at gun­point”.

Around 3:45 pm on Mon­day, po­lice in­ter­cept­ed a stolen ve­hi­cle on the high­way when its oc­cu­pants at­tempt­ed to es­cape and fired shots at the of­fi­cers.

They re­turned fire, killing one of the sus­pects while the oth­er sus­pect ran in­to a near­by bushy area in the vicin­i­ty of the Cou­va Med­ical and Mul­ti-Train­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

Mys­tar said po­lice are still search­ing for the sus­pect.

“Some peo­ple stopped and they were video­tap­ing. Re­mem­ber, po­lice of­fi­cers are trained as it re­lates to the use of force pol­i­cy. We look at cer­tain things in an ex­change of gun­fire like the back­drops and so on, how­ev­er, crim­i­nals don’t ob­serve those and fire in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly,” Mys­tar warned.

He ad­vis­es cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue dri­ving, once traf­fic is not ob­struct­ed.

But, what should you do if you’re in traf­fic and a shootout en­sues?

Ac­cord­ing to Law En­force­ment and Com­bat Con­sul­tant, Paul-Daniel Na­hous, “What I would rec­om­mend is to get in the crouched po­si­tion as much as you can, wind up the win­dow un­der­stand­ing that a car door doesn’t cov­er against a mod­ern pro­jec­tile. A car door is mere­ly con­ceal­ment how­ev­er, in that po­si­tion you are mak­ing your­self a small­er tar­get.”

How­ev­er, if an of­fi­cer ap­proach­es your ve­hi­cle win­dow in an ac­tive shootout, he said it’s im­por­tant to know what to do.

He sug­gest­ed, “You need to do is show them that there is noth­ing in your hands and what I rec­om­mend peo­ple do whether it be in a shoot­ing sit­u­a­tion or a reg­u­lar traf­fic stop is put your hands in the 10 and two po­si­tion and put them high­er even to show the of­fi­cers that your hands are there then it’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

“Any­time your hands are hid­den, that will be seen as a threat to the of­fi­cer so step one is you show them your hands, com­ply with all le­gal in­struc­tions giv­en to you un­til the sce­nario plays out,” Na­hous ex­plained.

He re­mind­ed cit­i­zens that po­lice of­fi­cers al­so have the right to pro­tect them­selves.

“Re­mem­ber if you’re an of­fi­cer and look­ing on from the out­side, the po­lice of­fi­cer has a fam­i­ly as well and with all the train­ing and all the equip­ment you still have to safe­guard your life as an of­fi­cer,” he said.

If a shoot­ing takes place while you’re in a pub­lic space, Na­hous sug­gest­ed run­ning in­to a near­by build­ing and alert­ing oth­ers of the in­ci­dent.

“If there is nowhere ac­ces­si­ble for you to go in for what­ev­er rea­son you should go any­where where you’ll get cov­er,” he added.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Mys­tar said while of­fi­cers can­not pre­dict when a crime will hap­pen, they will con­tin­ue to main­tain a high pres­ence to de­ter crim­i­nals.

“There will be a strong pres­ence in and about by all the di­vi­sions on the high­ways so when you see us do not com­plain. Some­times you say you’re not see­ing of­fi­cers but now you’re go­ing to be see­ing them in full force,” Mys­tar as­sured.


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