Escaped immigration detainee recaptured

An es­caped de­tainee from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre (IDC) has been re­cap­tured fol­low­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in Arou­ca.

The sus­pect, iden­ti­fied as Edin­son Maltin Al­cala Larosa of Thomas Trace, Arou­ca, was ar­rest­ed dur­ing Op­er­a­tion R.E.S.O.L.U.T.E. SHIELD, which was car­ried out in the East­ern Dis­trict of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion be­tween 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Tues­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a TTPS me­dia re­lease, of­fi­cers act­ed on in­tel­li­gence that led them to Hil­da Trace, Arou­ca, where they con­duct­ed covert sur­veil­lance on a gal­vanised struc­ture along the road­way.

At about 5:30 p.m., of­fi­cers ob­served a man ap­proach­ing the lo­ca­tion. Based on pri­or in­tel­li­gence and pos­i­tive iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, they moved in and ar­rest­ed him dur­ing what po­lice de­scribed as a tac­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tion.

Sub­se­quent en­quiries con­firmed that the sus­pect was the same in­di­vid­ual who had es­caped from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day, Ju­ly 18.

Po­lice said Al­cala Larosa was tak­en in­to cus­tody and re­mains de­tained as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.

The op­er­a­tion formed part of the TTPS’ on­go­ing crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tive, Op­er­a­tion R.E.S.O.L.U.T.E. SHIELD, which tar­gets pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers and per­sons want­ed by law en­force­ment through in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven polic­ing.

The ex­er­cise was ini­ti­at­ed by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Gift and co­or­di­nat­ed by ASP Pierre and In­spec­tor Ram­di­al. It was su­per­vised by Cor­po­ral Forde, with of­fi­cers of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force (East) re­ceiv­ing sup­port from mem­bers of the TTPS K9 Unit.

The TTPS did not dis­close how the de­tainee es­caped from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre or whether any ad­di­tion­al charges are ex­pect­ed to arise from the es­cape.

Po­lice al­so did not in­di­cate the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Al­cala Larosa’s de­ten­tion at the IDC be­fore his es­cape.

The re­cap­ture comes three days af­ter the de­tainee’s re­port­ed es­cape and fol­lows con­tin­ued ef­forts by law en­force­ment of­fi­cers to lo­cate and ap­pre­hend him.

The TTPS said in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and co­or­di­nat­ed op­er­a­tions re­main cen­tral to its polic­ing strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly in lo­cat­ing want­ed per­sons and fugi­tives.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the es­cape and the cir­cum­stances that al­lowed the de­tainee to evade cus­tody re­main on­go­ing. Po­lice have not re­leased fur­ther de­tails, say­ing en­quiries are con­tin­u­ing.