Cops kill man in Arima shootout

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

A Care­nage man was shot dead by po­lice af­ter al­leged­ly point­ing a firearm at of­fi­cers while at­tempt­ing to evade cap­ture fol­low­ing a high-speed chase through Mal­abar and Ari­ma ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

The de­ceased has been iden­ti­fied as Karlise Hart, of Lanse Mi­tan Road, Care­nage.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, the in­ci­dent be­gan around 12.50 am on Sat­ur­day, when of­fi­cers on pa­trol along Koon Koon Street, Mal­abar, ob­served a red Nis­san Almera with three men who re­port­ed­ly ap­peared to be act­ing sus­pi­cious­ly.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers at­tempt­ed to in­ter­cept the ve­hi­cle, but the dri­ver al­leged­ly re­fused to stop and sped off along Subero Street.

A chase en­sued through sev­er­al streets in Mal­abar, in­clud­ing Sec­ond Koon Koon Street and Train­line, prompt­ing the of­fi­cers to re­quest as­sis­tance from the Na­tion­al Dis­patch Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NDOC). The pur­suit even­tu­al­ly end­ed along Darceuil Lane, off the Ari­ma Old Road, where po­lice said the ve­hi­cle came to an abrupt stop.

The three oc­cu­pants re­port­ed­ly aban­doned the car and fled in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions.

Of­fi­cers from the Task Force were sub­se­quent­ly called in to as­sist with search­es in the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Po­lice said in­for­ma­tion re­ceived dur­ing the op­er­a­tion led of­fi­cers to Moore Lane, Saro­ga Dri­ve, where Hart was al­leged­ly spot­ted walk­ing along a gal­vanised rooftop.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, Hart, al­leged­ly point­ed an ob­ject re­sem­bling a firearm to­wards two of­fi­cers who were ap­proach­ing his lo­ca­tion. The of­fi­cers dis­charged sev­er­al rounds in his di­rec­tion, hit­ting him. Hart col­lapsed on the rooftop.

Of­fi­cers sub­se­quent­ly re­moved him from the roof and trans­port­ed him to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he was pro­nounced dead at 1.30 am by a doc­tor.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors lat­er re­port­ed­ly re­cov­ered five spent 9mm shells, a knife and a black re­volver con­tain­ing one live .38-cal­i­bre round from the rooftop.

The car was al­so seized and tak­en to the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion for fur­ther foren­sic ex­am­i­na­tion.

Po­lice have not in­di­cat­ed whether the two oth­er oc­cu­pants of the ve­hi­cle were ap­pre­hend­ed or any ad­di­tion­al ar­rests have been made.

The mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Se­nior of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing W/In­sp Ra­mai, Act­ing Sgt Bram­ble and Act­ing W/Sgt Hinds, were in­volved in co­or­di­nat­ing the po­lice re­sponse.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.