Stolen vehicle recovered; suspect arrested in Valencia

A stolen ve­hi­cle was re­cov­ered and one man ar­rest­ed dur­ing a po­lice op­er­a­tion car­ried out in the Va­len­cia Dis­trict on Sun­day night.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said of­fi­cers con­duct­ed a Rov­ing Road­check Op­er­a­tion, dubbed Steady Guard, be­tween 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Sun­day as part of on­go­ing law en­force­ment ef­forts in the dis­trict.

The ex­er­cise was co­or­di­nat­ed by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Et­ti­enne, In­spec­tors Gadar and Harp­er, and Sergeant Ram­nar­ine, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Po­lice Con­sta­ble Rat­tans­ingh. Of­fi­cers at­tached to the Va­len­cia Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment al­so took part.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, of­fi­cers were on pa­trol along Tapana Road when they ob­served two ve­hi­cles — a Toy­ota Hilux and a Nis­san Blue­bird Syl­phy.

Po­lice said as of­fi­cers ap­proached, the dri­ver of the Nis­san ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle and ran in­to near­by bush­es, man­ag­ing to evade cap­ture. The dri­ver of the Toy­ota Hilux re­mained at the scene and was de­tained by of­fi­cers.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors lat­er car­ried out checks on the Nis­san and dis­cov­ered the ve­hi­cle had been tam­pered with and was dis­play­ing false reg­is­tra­tion plates.

Fur­ther en­quiries con­firmed that the Nis­san Blue­bird Syl­phy had been re­port­ed stolen from the Pin­to Po­lice Dis­trict on June 24.

Po­lice said in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­duct­ed at the scene led to the ar­rest of the dri­ver of the Toy­ota Hilux, a 31-year-old man, on sus­pi­cion of of­fences con­nect­ed to the stolen ve­hi­cle.

Both ve­hi­cles were seized and trans­port­ed to the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The TTPS has not re­leased the iden­ti­ty of the sus­pect and en­quiries in­to the mat­ter re­main on­go­ing, in­clud­ing ef­forts to lo­cate the dri­ver who es­caped dur­ing the op­er­a­tion.