The search of a home in Tu­na­puna led to the death of a 23-year-old man who re­port­ed­ly shot at po­lice with an AK-47 as­sault ri­fle on Fri­day af­ter­noon.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force vis­it­ed the Dook­ie Street home of Dirrel Bullen, at around 3.10 pm to ex­e­cute a search war­rant.

Of­fi­cers dur­ing the op­er­a­tion blocked off both ac­cess points on the street.

How­ev­er, Bullen re­port­ed­ly jumped from a win­dow on­to the roof of the house and shot at the of­fi­cers. Bullen, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cers then slid down a near­by wa­ter tank and con­tin­ued to shoot at of­fi­cers who took cov­er and re­turned fire hit­ting him.

Po­lice took Bullen to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex where he was de­clared dead.

Po­lice seized an AK-47 and three mag­a­zines at the scene. Sources said Bullen was well known to the po­lice and was ar­rest­ed and charged with var­i­ous of­fences in­clud­ing rob­bery.

One of­fi­cer said the search of Bullen's house was done in re­sponse to the wound­ing of a man in St Joseph on Fri­day morn­ing. When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene on Fri­day af­ter­noon, in­ves­ti­ga­tors were still gath­er­ing ev­i­dence.

One rel­a­tive who asked not to be named, dis­put­ed the of­fi­cial ac­count of the in­ci­dent giv­en by po­lice and said she felt Bullen was mur­dered and felt the of­fi­cers could have ap­pre­hend­ed him with­out killing him. "Right is right wrong is wrong.

"Shoot him in his foot, break his hand, break his foot, lock him up, but they mur­der­ing peo­ple.

"If he did some­thing wrong but you all (po­lice) trained to shoot.

"All those shots ring out for one per­son?"

The rel­a­tive how­ev­er ac­knowl­edged that she did not live in the area and was not around Bullen long enough to know if he was in­volved in crime.

She not­ed Bullen's broth­er, Josi­ah Ram­sa­hai was al­so killed by po­lice in 2016.

All po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings are in­ves­ti­gat­ed by a First Di­vi­sion Of­fi­cer (FDO), that is an of­fi­cer at the rank of As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice (ASP) or above.