A 27-year-old man, be­lieved to be one of two sus­pects in­volved in a re­port of Rob­bery with Vi­o­lence that oc­curred last month in Va­len­cia, was grant­ed $150,000 bail by a Jus­tice of the Peace last Fri­day.

Joseph Williams of Beetham Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain, was charged on June 9 by PC Bap­tiste, of the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID), af­ter be­ing dis­charged at

hos­pi­tal un­der po­lice guard on June 7 for in­juries sus­tained dur­ing an al­leged high-speed chase and shootout with law en­force­ment per­son­nel who re­spond­ed to the rob­bery re­port.

Williams is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the San­gre Grande Mag­is­trates’ Court on June 22 to an­swer the charge.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, at 9.20 pm on May 15, a home­own­er ar­rived at his Va­len­cia home where he pro­ceed­ed to un­pack gro­ceries from his black Toy­ota Aqua mo­tor ve­hi­cle when two male sus­pects al­leged­ly en­tered the premis­es and ac­cost­ed him.

One of the sus­pects, CID de­tec­tives were told, was armed with a firearm and struck the home­own­er in the face and made him lie down on the floor. Po­lice al­so learned that the sus­pects taped the home­own­er’s mouth as well as re­lieved him of the keys to his mo­tor ve­hi­cle. The as­sailants es­caped with the man’s ve­hi­cle.

The home­own­er man­aged to free him­self and sub­se­quent­ly made a re­port to the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post at 10.30 that night. He was al­so tak­en for med­ical treat­ment and dis­charged.

Po­lice im­me­di­ate­ly made an all-points bul­letin and the stolen ve­hi­cle was sight­ed in the North­ern Di­vi­sion.

A high-speed chase en­sued fol­lowed by an ex­change of gun­fire be­tween the sus­pects and Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion Op­er­a­tional Crime Pa­trol in the Cara­po area where one of the sus­pects was ob­served to be suf­fer­ing from gun­shot wounds.

The oth­er sus­pect is at large. In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­main ac­tive.