Two men from Spring Valley, Mt Dor in Champs Fleurs, were killed during a police-involved shooting in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday.
The men have been identified as Jerome Charles, 24, and Andrew Campbell, 21, of the same area.
According to a TTPS release, Charles and Campbell, who were described as “suspects,” “lost their lives after they initiated a gunfight with officers who were conducting a search warrant exercise.”
The TTPS said the officers recovered two illegal guns at the scene of the incident.
The release said officers were on an exercise at about 4.30 am when they attempted to execute a search warrant at the home of a person of interest, relative to recent shootings in the Mt D’or district.
It said the police were confronted by two armed men who reportedly fired at the officers.
The officers returned fire. Both men ran off. The officers chased after the men, who were found a short distance away, nursing gunshot wounds. The men were taken to the Eric Williams Medical Science Complex, Mt Hope, but were pronounced dead.
The police said two guns - one AK-47 assault rifle with 18 rounds of 7.62 ammunition, and one Glock 17 pistol, with 17 rounds of nine-millimetre ammunition - were seized.
During a visit to the area on Thursday, residents refuted what the TTPS claimed happened, saying that the men “had no guns, did not shoot at the police and were not murder suspects or any other kind of suspects in any other crime.”
The residents, who preferred to speak off the record, said the area was unusually quiet given the fact that they were “left in shock and feelings of disbelief.”
Charles’ mother, Vanessa, said that her son was a victim of a chopping and that the matter was currently before the courts.
“He was never any murder suspect. In fact, with the recent murders that happened in the area, my son was up the road with me and he was never involved in anything like that,” she said.
“My son, who was my first child of seven children, was good friends with Andrew and two of them were sitting and liming on the stairs when the police came up on them. In fact, my son had just called his girlfriend at about 3.29 am and told her where he was that he was over the hill liming and showed her. Then about seven o’clock I get a call that my son die. That is all I have to say you know, but is police kill him,” Vanessa said.
Campbell’s stepfather, who wished not to be named, said he was unclear as to what actually took place, but said he is hoping for justice.
He said, “I am really trying to figure out what it is that really take place. Andrew and Jerome were good friends and I cannot say anything else other than that.”
Head of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA), David West, said the PCA has already begun an investigation into the first case of a police-involved deadly shooting for 2023.
In 2022, the PCA recorded 46 people being shot and killed by the police.