An armed in­trud­er who was caught in a class­room at a Cara­pichaima pri­ma­ry school on Tues­day, was shot dead by a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer.

He was iden­ti­fied as Dilon Berkley, 37, of Todd’s Road, Ca­paro, a Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS) se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer who was al­so em­ployed at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, a 43-year-old sergeant, an FUL hold­er em­ployed with MTS, based at the com­pa­ny’s Cou­va Sec­ondary sub base, re­ceived a tele­phone call from a fe­male se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer on du­ty at the Cara­pichaima An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School about an in­trud­er on the premis­es. He went to the school and while search­ing a class­room, saw the in­trud­er who point­ed a gun at him.

The sergeant said he be­came fear­ful for his life and fired one shot in the di­rec­tion of the in­trud­er who col­lapsed and died.

Po­lice said the in­trud­er wore a ski mask, black fish­er­man hat, black T-shirt, blue jeans and rub­ber gar­den boots. There was a crow­bar and a bolt cut­ter close by. A sil­ver and black re­volver was found a short dis­tance from the body.

A dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer or­dered re­moval of the body pend­ing a post-mortem at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James.

Po­lice said the in­trud­er was iden­ti­fied as an MTS of­fi­cer based at the Mara­bel­la North Sec­ondary School. He last worked on No­vem­ber 5 at the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School.

A close friend of Berkley, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said a few months ago he was ques­tioned by the po­lice about a se­ries of rob­beries and break-ins at schools but was nev­er charged.

“He had a lot of chil­dren, I think ten and that’s why he sac­ri­ficed to work with MTS and WASA,” Berkley’s friend said.

MTS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Adri­an Ray­mond con­firmed that there had been an in­ci­dent at the Cara­pichaima An­gli­can School and said the com­pa­ny had been co-op­er­at­ing with the po­lice.

“As is pro­to­col, the com­pa­ny has of­fered coun­selling and sup­port to all of our of­fi­cers in­volved in the in­ci­dent through the com­pa­ny’s Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP). Due to the fact that this mat­ter is an ac­tive po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the com­pa­ny will not be is­su­ing any fur­ther state­ments at this time,” Ray­mond said.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.