Suspected police killer dies in police shoot out

Ralph Ban­warie

A man want­ed in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of a po­lice of­fi­cer was shot and killed by po­lice dur­ing an ex­change of gun­fire in Matu­ra on Tues­day night.

The de­ceased has been iden­ti­fied as 48-year-old Has­san John­son, al­so known as “H-Man”.

John­son was want­ed in con­nec­tion with the Ju­ly 28 mur­der of Po­lice Con­sta­ble Romel Dou­glas, 48, who was shot and killed by gun­men while sit­ting in his car along Ca­roni Bank Road, Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni.

Po­lice had been search­ing for John­son since the killing.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, of­fi­cers from the East­ern Di­vi­sion re­ceived in­for­ma­tion ear­li­er on Tues­day about a strange man seen at Mo­ra Trace, Matu­ra. When of­fi­cers re­spond­ed, the man ran in­to a forest­ed area and es­caped.

Po­lice re­turned to Mo­ra Trace lat­er that night af­ter re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion that John­son was stay­ing at a house in the area.

The of­fi­cers sur­round­ed the house, an­nounced their pres­ence and or­dered John­son to sur­ren­der.

Po­lice said he re­fused and opened fire at the of­fi­cers, who re­turned fire.

John­son was shot sev­er­al times and fell to the ground. He was tak­en to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal, where he lat­er suc­cumbed to his in­juries.

A woman who was al­leged­ly har­bour­ing John­son was de­tained and is as­sist­ing po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Res­i­dents of Mo­ra Trace have raised con­cerns about an in­creas­ing num­ber of un­fa­mil­iar peo­ple re­port­ed­ly stay­ing in makeshift struc­tures in the area.

One el­der­ly res­i­dent told Guardian Me­dia that out­siders were giv­ing Matu­ra a bad name and called for the sit­u­a­tion to be ad­dressed.

Po­lice are con­tin­u­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the shoot­ing.