2 Venezuelans held after shootout with police

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Two Venezue­lans were ar­rest­ed fol­low­ing a high-speed chase and ex­change of gun­fire with po­lice, af­ter a ve­hi­cle was stolen from a PH taxi dri­ver at gun­point in Princes Town on Wednes­day night. No one was in­jured but po­lice re­cov­ered two firearms.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, the vic­tim was ply­ing his white Sub­aru for hire around 8.35 pm when he picked up five men along the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road. They asked to be tak­en to In­ver­ness Road in Bor­de Narve, but when they got to a se­clud­ed area, they robbed the dri­ver of a cel­lu­lar phone, a quan­ti­ty of cash and his ve­hi­cle.

Short­ly af­ter, of­fi­cers of the South­ern Di­vi­sion Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol (ERP) re­spond­ed and in­ter­cept­ed the ve­hi­cle near the Usine Ste Madeleine pond/golf course. Dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, one of the gun­men fired at of­fi­cers, who re­turned fire. Two sus­pects, aged 22 and 24, were sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed, while the oth­er three sus­pects es­caped.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area where the rob­bery oc­curred, a res­i­dent said he heard some­one bang­ing on his fence and saw the vic­tim. He said he was ini­tial­ly un­sure whether the man was a vic­tim or a crim­i­nal, so he pro­ceed­ed with cau­tion.

“He was ex­treme­ly fright­ened, the guy was ter­rorised, any help he could have got­ten. But, I mean, based on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, I wouldn’t have tak­en the chance to come out my house.

“There are sit­u­a­tions that hap­pen, that peo­ple in this sit­u­a­tion, they claim that they need help but this time is a rob­bery tak­ing place.”

He said he sub­se­quent­ly as­sist­ed the vic­tim by call­ing the po­lice. The res­i­dent, who said he has been a vic­tim of rob­beries sev­er­al times, com­mend­ed the po­lice for their quick re­sponse and for ap­pre­hend­ing the ban­dits.

“They should have been in body bags for my part. You can­not have a coun­try in this sit­u­a­tion all the time.”

De­spite the crimes in­volv­ing for­eign na­tion­als, he avoid­ed broad gen­er­al­i­sa­tions, not­ing that not all of them were in­volved in crime, and some were gen­uine­ly work­ing hard to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies.

The South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, with the as­sis­tance of the Air Sup­port Unit and oth­er units of the di­vi­sion, con­duct­ed ex­ten­sive search­es for three oth­er sus­pects but were un­suc­cess­ful in find­ing them.