A 22-year-old man was fa­tal­ly shot by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing an armed con­fronta­tion ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing in Mal­ick, fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to a re­port­ed shoot­ing in San Juan hours ear­li­er.

The man has been iden­ti­fied as Patrick Dim­itri Fletch­er of Up­per 6th Av­enue, Barataria. 

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial po­lice re­port, around 2.50 am yes­ter­day, of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion were re­turn­ing from mo­bile pa­trol when they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about sus­pects linked to a shoot­ing that oc­curred at Thomas Street, Sun­shine Av­enue, San Juan around 12.45 am. The sus­pects were re­port­ed­ly at a “Zess” par­ty in the vicin­i­ty of Flor­cencia Lane, Shende Street, Up­per 6th Av­enue, Mal­ick.

Up­on ar­rival at the lo­ca­tion, of­fi­cers ob­served sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als stand­ing along Flor­cencia Lane who quick­ly fled in­to near­by bush­es. Of­fi­cers pur­sued on foot, while oth­ers moved to­ward a bas­ket­ball court in an at­tempt to cor­don off the area.

At the bas­ket­ball court, po­lice ob­served two men. One, dressed in dark-coloured cloth­ing, fled in­to the bush­es. The sec­ond man, de­scribed as be­ing of African de­scent and dressed in a black hood­ie and blue jeans, re­port­ed­ly matched the de­scrip­tion of a sus­pect in the ear­li­er San Juan shoot­ing.

Po­lice said the man was seen hold­ing what ap­peared to be a black met­al ob­ject re­sem­bling a firearm. Of­fi­cers claimed they iden­ti­fied them­selves and shout­ed, “Po­lice, po­lice, drop the gun.” The man al­leged­ly point­ed the ob­ject in their di­rec­tion and dis­charged it, prompt­ing the of­fi­cers to re­turn fire.

The sus­pect col­lapsed near the bas­ket­ball court. Of­fi­cers said they re­trieved a black met­al ob­ject near­by, which was lat­er iden­ti­fied as a Tau­rus 9mm pis­tol with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing eight rounds of live am­mu­ni­tion. Po­lice said of­fi­cers at the scene ren­dered aid and trans­port­ed the in­jured man to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival at 3.10 am.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.