Six arrested in Lopinot robbery probe and Port-of-Spain exercise

Po­lice ar­rest­ed six peo­ple in two sep­a­rate op­er­a­tions this week, in­clud­ing three sus­pects linked to a vi­o­lent rob­bery and in­de­cent as­sault in Lopinot and three oth­ers dur­ing a joint ex­er­cise in Port-of-Spain.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the three rob­bery sus­pects were held fol­low­ing in­quiries in­to an in­ci­dent that oc­curred along Lopinot Road, Arou­ca, on Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, at about 7:35 p.m., three vic­tims- an 18-year-old man and two 17-year-olds - were walk­ing south along the road­way when they were ap­proached by three male sus­pects who an­nounced a rob­bery.

Po­lice re­port­ed that the vic­tims were forced to kneel and phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed be­fore be­ing re­lieved of three cel­lu­lar phones, wal­lets con­tain­ing per­son­al doc­u­ments and a to­tal of TT$260 in cash.

Dur­ing the in­ci­dent, of­fi­cers said one of the sus­pects al­so in­de­cent­ly as­sault­ed the 17-year-old fe­male vic­tim be­fore the group es­caped north along Lopinot Road.

Fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions car­ried out by of­fi­cers of the Arou­ca Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment, three sus­pects were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent. Po­lice iden­ti­fied them as an 18-year-old man and two 17-year-olds, all from Lopinot Road, Arou­ca.

In a sep­a­rate op­er­a­tion, po­lice con­duct­ed a joint rov­ing ex­er­cise across sev­er­al ar­eas of the Port of Spain Di­vi­sion and made three ad­di­tion­al ar­rests.

The ex­er­cise took place on Tues­day, June 30, be­tween 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2026. Of­fi­cers car­ried out checks along In­de­pen­dence Square North and South, Lodge Place, Wright­son Road, South Quay, Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road, Rook­ery Nook, Mar­aval, Tra­garete Road, Ara­pi­ta Av­enue and French Street, Wood­brook.

Po­lice said 28 ve­hi­cles were searched and 13 Elec­tron­ic Fixed Penal­ty No­tices were is­sued.

Among those ar­rest­ed were a 32-year-old man for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence af­ter al­leged­ly record­ing a breath al­co­hol read­ing of 64 mi­cro­grams per 100 mil­li­l­itres of breath, an­oth­er man for dri­ving with­out ever ob­tain­ing a dri­ver’s per­mit and op­er­at­ing a ve­hi­cle with­out a valid Cer­tifi­cate of In­spec­tion, and a Venezue­lan na­tion­al.

The op­er­a­tion was sanc­tioned by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Thom, Su­per­in­ten­dents Baird and Ramdeen, and ASPs Heath and Cadette.