Woman held after high-powered rifle found in vehicle

A 30-year-old woman has been ar­rest­ed af­ter po­lice re­cov­ered a high-pow­ered ri­fle and am­mu­ni­tion dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion in Mamoral No. 1 on Mon­day.

The op­er­a­tion, con­duct­ed by of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Gang Unit, stemmed from in­for­ma­tion that a man known as “Shawn” was al­leged­ly in pos­ses­sion of sev­er­al firearms be­lieved to have been stolen from the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion at King’s Wharf.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), in­tel­li­gence al­so sug­gest­ed that the sus­pect was trans­port­ing il­le­gal firearms in a white Kia K2700 mo­tor ve­hi­cle.

The ex­er­cise was led by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rudolph Bhag­wan­deen and Su­per­in­ten­dent Gloudon. It was co­or­di­nat­ed by ASP (Ag.) Mark Her­nan­dez and su­per­vised by Ag. Cor­po­ral Mo­hammed.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers lo­cat­ed the white Kia K2700, reg­is­tra­tion TCM 5855, parked in a se­clud­ed area off Mamoral No. 1 and es­tab­lished sur­veil­lance.

Dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, of­fi­cers ob­served a woman who was lat­er iden­ti­fied as the com­mon-law wife of the sus­pect. Around 6:30 p.m., of­fi­cers ap­proached her and made en­quiries about the sus­pect’s where­abouts.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed that dur­ing the in­ter­ac­tion, the woman ap­peared to sig­nal to a man match­ing the sus­pect’s de­scrip­tion, af­ter which sev­er­al men fled from the area.

The woman was in­formed of the in­tel­li­gence re­ceived and of the of­fi­cers’ au­thor­i­ty to con­duct a search un­der Reg­u­la­tion 12 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2026. Po­lice said she ad­mit­ted hav­ing ac­cess to and oc­ca­sion­al­ly dri­ving the ve­hi­cle.

Be­cause of poor light­ing con­di­tions and con­cerns for of­fi­cer safe­ty, the ve­hi­cle was tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion, where a de­tailed search was car­ried out in the woman’s pres­ence.

Dur­ing the search, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered an AK-type ri­fle fit­ted with a fold­ing met­al stock con­cealed be­hind the dri­ver’s seat. A mag­a­zine con­tain­ing 19 rounds of 7.62 x 39 mm am­mu­ni­tion was al­so re­cov­ered.

As a re­sult, Kristal Lewis, of Mamoral No. 1, was ar­rest­ed on sus­pi­cion of pos­ses­sion of a firearm and pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion.

She re­mains in po­lice cus­tody while in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue and le­gal ad­vice is be­ing sought.

Po­lice are al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether the weapon is linked to the re­port­ed theft of firearms from the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion at King’s Wharf. In­ves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ue en­quiries in­to the ori­gin of the ri­fle and any pos­si­ble con­nec­tions to or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.