A sec­ond sus­pect in the kid­nap­ping of Jankie Satie Karim was shot and killed dur­ing a late-night po­lice op­er­a­tion on Mon­day, hours af­ter the 44-year-old vic­tim was res­cued.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­firmed that around 10.30 p.m., of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force and the Guard and Emer­gency Branch pro­ceed­ed to Old Pi­ar­co Road as part of on­go­ing in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions.

Up­on ar­rival at the sus­pect’s home, of­fi­cers an­nounced their pres­ence but were im­me­di­ate­ly con­front­ed by the man, who was armed with a firearm.

“In keep­ing with the TTPS use of force pol­i­cy, the of­fi­cers dis­charged their ser­vice-is­sued firearms in re­sponse to the im­mi­nent threat,” Gue­var­ro said. The sus­pect was wound­ed and tak­en to the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead. A Glock 19 pis­tol and am­mu­ni­tion were re­cov­ered at the scene.

This marks the sec­ond fa­tal po­lice en­counter linked to the case in less than 24 hours.

Ear­li­er that evening, Karim was res­cued in Ram­panal­gas dur­ing a sep­a­rate po­lice op­er­a­tion. One of her ab­duc­tors was shot and killed af­ter hold­ing her at gun­point when of­fi­cers moved in. A fe­male sus­pect was al­so de­tained.

Karim, who was ab­duct­ed on Ju­ly 13, was found vis­i­bly shak­en but oth­er­wise un­harmed.

Gue­var­ro has linked the kid­nap­ping to a wider crim­i­nal net­work cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by law en­force­ment. He con­firmed that the group’s lead­ers re­main im­pris­oned at a se­cure lo­ca­tion, with com­mu­ni­ca­tion lines cut.

“My of­fi­cers and I are con­tin­u­ing to work through­out the night to cur­tail the iden­ti­fied threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty posed by these in­di­vid­u­als who have forged them­selves in­to this crim­i­nal syn­di­cate,” he said.

“While the TTPS is out here work­ing hard to keep these peo­ple in that se­cure lo­ca­tion away from you, there are per­sons amongst you who are work­ing over­time to get them out so they can con­tin­ue to ter­rorise Trinidad and To­ba­go.”