SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

A pur­port­ed shoot-out be­tween of­fi­cers of the po­lice Home In­va­sion Team (HIT) and sus­pect­ed ban­dits end­ed with the deaths of three men and the ar­rest of two oth­ers in Cunu­pia, po­lice said.

Po­lice sources con­firmed that mem­bers of the HIT and the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion were in Cunu­pia ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing when they re­ceived a re­port of a home in­va­sion in progress at a house in the area.

Of­fi­cers went to the scene; how­ev­er, the sus­pects, they said, scat­tered to dif­fer­ent ar­eas.

As of­fi­cers searched for the men, the sus­pects opened fire from those lo­ca­tions.

Po­lice re­turned fire, killing three of the men. They have not yet been iden­ti­fied.

Two sus­pects were ar­rest­ed dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

As of 8.15 am, of­fi­cers from var­i­ous units have been mo­bilised to search for ad­di­tion­al sus­pects be­lieved to be part of the group in­volved in the home in­va­sion.

One of­fi­cer said the HIT had been aware of sev­er­al re­ports of home in­va­sions in ar­eas north of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly Cunu­pia and Long­denville, and had di­rect­ed re­sources to main­tain a more vis­i­ble pres­ence to quell fur­ther at­tacks.