A high-speed po­lice chase and shoot­ing on the high­way last night end­ed with a 63-year-old dri­ver be­ing shot and an of­fi­cer nurs­ing in­juries to his foot. The dri­ver, a res­i­dent of Guaracara Road, Gas­par­il­lo, is ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

 The dra­ma un­fold­ed around 11.30 pm when the dri­ver al­leged­ly sped off af­ter be­ing stopped by the po­lice in Mara­bel­la. A po­lice re­port stat­ed that two con­sta­bles at­tached to the Mara­bel­la Po­lice sta­tion were on mo­bile pa­trol along Union Road, Mara­bel­la when they stopped a gold Toy­ota NZE Corol­la. While the of­fi­cers were ap­proach­ing the car, the dri­ver sped off and the of­fi­cers gave chase. 

While pur­su­ing the car which drove through Gas­par­il­lo and then even­tu­al­ly turned on­to the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way, the of­fi­cers called for as­sis­tance from the Freeport and Debe High­way Pa­trols. This led to a po­lice road­block near the Freeport Fly­over which re­sult­ed in the car com­ing to stop. 

But, as the po­lice ap­proached the car the dri­ver al­leged­ly sped off again and rolled over an of­fi­cer's right foot. The re­port stat­ed that the of­fi­cer be­came afraid for his life and dis­charged 14 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion from his ser­vice firearm, caus­ing the ve­hi­cle to even­tu­al­ly run off the road and in­to the me­di­an. 

The dri­ver suf­fered two gun­shot wounds to his ab­domen. The po­lice took him to Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty where he was treat­ed and trans­ferred to the Mt Hope hos­pi­tal. Mean­while, the of­fi­cer was treat­ed for in­juries to his right foot and dis­charged.

ASP Gool, Ag Sgt Har­riot, PC Ram­di­al and PC Naipaul were among the of­fi­cers who vis­it­ed the scene. The gun and am­mu­ni­tion of the of­fi­cer who fired the shots were were seized and lodged at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion.  The in­jured man's ve­hi­cle, a taxi, was towed to the po­lice sta­tion as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.

Re­porter: Sascha Wil­son