Man killed in shootout with cops

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

A car chase in­to Cas­cade on Sun­day night end­ed with a shootout and the death of one man, po­lice said yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion gath­ered by po­lice, of­fi­cers of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) were on pa­trol around 10 pm along the West­ern Main Road when they no­ticed a white Nis­san AD Wag­on dri­ving near­by with three men in­side.

On see­ing the po­lice ve­hi­cle, the dri­ver sped off, which led to of­fi­cers chas­ing them to Mt Holo­lo, Cas­cade.

Dur­ing the chase, the men shot at the po­lice, who re­turned fire, caus­ing the AD Wag­on to veer off the road­way.

Two of the sus­pects es­caped, while the third, who was shot, was tak­en to the Port-of- Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he was de­clared dead.

Po­lice said the man was lat­er iden­ti­fied as Shaquille Smart but few de­tails were avail­able on him up to late yes­ter­day.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors found six spent 5.56 spent shells at the scene.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), Smart’s death brings the num­ber of peo­ple killed in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings to nine for the year. Six­ty-eight peo­ple were killed out of the 55 in­ci­dents of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings in 2025, while 55 peo­ple were killed out of the 37 cas­es of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings in 2024. In 2023, there were 39 cas­es of fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.