Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A day af­ter ban­dits were caught on cam­era at­tempt­ing to rob a fam­i­ly at their Val­sayn Av­enue home, res­i­dents say that over­grown bush­es from near­by parcels of land pro­vide the ide­al es­cape and cov­er for ban­dits to stage home in­va­sions.

Po­lice said ban­dits climbed over the wall of a fam­i­ly’s home on Val­sayn Av­enue, North Val­sayn, just be­fore 1 pm on Mon­day. Se­cu­ri­ty cam­era footage of the in­ci­dent, shared on so­cial me­dia, showed one of the men ap­proach­ing one of the home­own­ers as she sat on a chair in the liv­ing room, as oth­er masked men stood near the door­way.

The fam­i­ly’s pet dog be­gan bark­ing, rais­ing an alarm as the woman’s rel­a­tives were seen com­ing to her de­fence, fright­en­ing the ban­dits away as they es­caped by climb­ing over the wall.

Po­lice con­firmed that two of the sus­pects—ages 14 and 22—were ar­rest­ed in the neigh­bour­hood by St Joseph po­lice, while a third was shot and killed by po­lice at Farm Road Ex­ten­sion, Curepe. His iden­ti­ty re­mained un­con­firmed up to press time.

De­tails on the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing were not avail­able; how­ev­er, the of­fi­cial po­lice re­port con­firmed that a gun was found and seized.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the neigh­bour­hood yes­ter­day, one home­own­er, who asked not to be named, said the bark­ing from the fam­i­ly’s three-year-old pit­bull, Nero, high­light­ed the in­ci­dent. An­oth­er res­i­dent said while she was grate­ful no one was hurt or killed in the at­tack, she was con­cerned that it may not be the last at­tack by ban­dits due to the bush­es.

“The back of us... on the north­ern side of Val­sayn Av­enue, we ex­pe­ri­ence fires, we ex­pe­ri­ence rob­beries be­cause of the land...It’s not kept prop­er­ly in a prop­er state, the trees are over­grown, and the ban­dits pass through there... they climb over peo­ple’s walls from that side.”

The res­i­dent added that Mon­day’s at­tack has left many res­i­dents para­noid as they are now aware that ban­dits could be mon­i­tor­ing their ac­tiv­i­ties, not­ing that even “step­ping out­side your home was a risk.”

“It’s to­tal­ly un­safe, it’s a risk, you can’t do any­thing with­out think­ing some­one is over the wall watch­ing you move around in your gar­den or some­thing like that. It’s a lot of risk.”

Po­lice from the St Joseph CID are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.