An­na-Lisa Paul

Al­though car-jack­ings and armed rob­beries in the Trinci­ty area are not new, res­i­dents say they will con­tin­ue to adopt self-im­posed re­stric­tions to es­cape the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

Fresh con­cerns sur­faced yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the rob­bery of an El Do­ra­do man af­ter he ar­rived to vis­it a rel­a­tive at Tenth Street West, Cas­sel­ton Gar­dens, around 8.25 pm on Mon­day.

The 38-year-old vic­tim was held up at gun­point by two men in front the home, fol­low­ing which he hand­ed over the keys to his black Hon­da Vezel val­ued at TT$185,000.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the man had just ar­rived with his chil­dren to vis­it the fam­i­ly mem­ber, when the two sus­pects con­front­ed them on the road.

As the sus­pects es­caped, a re­port was made to the po­lice and an All Points Bul­letin was is­sued.

A co­or­di­nat­ed strate­gic op­er­a­tion in­volv­ing sev­er­al units with­in the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion was ini­ti­at­ed, and Tu­na­puna Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice lat­er ob­served the stolen ve­hi­cle speed­ing west along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way and ini­ti­at­ed a chase.

Dur­ing the ef­fort to evade law­men, the sus­pects be­gan dri­ving reck­less­ly and lat­er crashed in­to a bar­ri­er near the en­trance to Grand Bazaar in Val­sayn.

Emer­gency health work­ers re­spond­ed and as­sist­ed in pro­vid­ing emer­gency treat­ment to the sus­pects, but one man suc­cumbed to his in­juries around 9.50 pm at hos­pi­tal. He re­mained uniden­ti­fied up to yes­ter­day.

The dead man’s ac­com­plice, of Quar­ry Street, San Juan, who is well known to the po­lice, re­mained hos­pi­talised in a sta­ble con­di­tion yes­ter­day, af­ter he too sus­tained in­juries in the ac­ci­dent.

Of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly re­cov­ered one Heck­ler and Koch firearm along with 13 rounds of .40 mm am­mu­ni­tion in the stolen ve­hi­cle.

One man yes­ter­day de­scribed the sus­pect, who re­mained hand­cuffed to the hos­pi­tal bed and un­der po­lice guard, as a pest. He claimed the ca­reer ban­dit was well known to the au­thor­i­ties, had a long record and was ac­cus­tomed to “dis­tress­ing” oth­ers.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day, home­own­ers re­mained locked in­side with on­ly a few will­ing to speak about the in­ci­dent, and crime in gen­er­al.

One woman said the time had come to fo­cus on har­ness­ing youth en­er­gy, as she ex­plained, “Many of them don’t feel love, they don’t know what love is so when these gangs are giv­ing them love and a sense of be­long­ing…that is what they are grav­i­tat­ing to­wards.”

An­oth­er el­der­ly fe­male res­i­dent point­ed to the se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras in­stalled along the streets, as she said it had been a neigh­bour­hood project sev­er­al years ago and was one of the ini­tia­tives in­tro­duced by the res­i­dents to bring a greater sense of se­cu­ri­ty to the area, fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar rob­bery on the same street.

This lat­est bla­tant dis­re­gard of the se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, she said, in­di­cat­ed that the ban­dits did not care about be­ing caught any­more.

An­oth­er woman the­o­rised, “They are lost souls try­ing to find recog­ni­tion through the bar­rel of a gun.”

She said it was on­ly “love, love, love, love” that could save some of these crim­i­nals who con­tin­ued to grav­i­tate to­wards the gangs who were fill­ing that void.