An­na Lisa-Paul

]Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A St Au­gus­tine man, who agreed to a meet­ing with some­one he met on­line via the Grindr ap­pli­ca­tion, was robbed and beat­en by sev­er­al sus­pects on Thurs­day, af­ter he went to the agreed lo­ca­tion.

The 30-year-old vic­tim, who lives at St John’s Road, St Au­gus­tine, re­port­ed­ly met the first sus­pect at Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, around 4 pm. He lat­er took the vic­tim to a shop at George Street, where he was con­front­ed by a sec­ond sus­pect who was armed with a firearm, as well as a third man.

As the three be­gan at­tack­ing the vic­tim, he be­gan fight­ing back and man­aged to es­cape.

He lat­er made his way to the IATF Po­lice Post at Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain and re­port­ed the mat­ter.

The vic­tim al­so re­port­ed that dur­ing the strug­gle with the sus­pects, his pants had been ripped, ex­pos­ing his un­der­wear.

Among the items that were stolen were the vic­tim’s house keys; a swipe card val­ued at $95, and a black Sam­sung J8 cell­phone val­ued at $2,100.

Of­fi­cers on pa­trol along George Street lat­er spot­ted the sec­ond sus­pect who was iden­ti­fied by the vic­tim.

The 18-year-old sus­pect, of George Street, Port-of-Spain, re­mained in po­lice cus­tody up to yes­ter­day.

Of­fi­cers said more ar­rests are im­mi­nent.

Grindr is the world’s largest so­cial net­work­ing app for gay, bi, trans and queer peo­ple.