Cops net three in Sangre Grande home invasions

Shane Su­perville

Two men and a woman have been ar­rest­ed and are ex­pect­ed to be charged in con­nec­tion with two sep­a­rate home in­va­sions in San­gre Grande ear­ly on Thurs­day morn­ing.

Po­lice said a 70-year-old vi­su­al­ly im­paired woman went to bed on Wednes­day evening and locked the doors of her home, but awoke hours lat­er around 3 am to find two men in her bed­room.

The woman re­port­ed that she felt the ban­dits ty­ing her hands with tape be­fore gag­ging her and steal­ing one of her gold rings.

She said she heard the ban­dits ran­sack­ing her home be­fore notic­ing it had gone qui­et.

The woman then freed her­self and called po­lice, who vis­it­ed the area.

On reach­ing the home, of­fi­cers checked the yard and no­ticed a lad­der had been used to ac­cess a lou­vre pane, which they be­lieve was the point of en­try for the ban­dits.

Po­lice searched the near­by Boodoo High­way and ar­rest­ed a San­ta Cruz man who had the woman's gold ring in his pos­ses­sion.

Ear­li­er, around 2.23 am, an­oth­er San­gre Grande res­i­dent re­port­ed that he was awak­ened by an alert from his CCTV cell­phone ap­pli­ca­tion.

Af­ter check­ing the cam­era feed, he saw two ban­dits with their faces cov­ered near his garage.

The man re­port­ed that both sus­pects opened the dri­ver's side door of his Toy­ota Hilux and searched for valu­ables be­fore climb­ing over his wall and es­cap­ing.

Po­lice were called and, while dri­ving to the man's home on Shiv­an Dri­ve, San­gre Chiq­ui­to, of­fi­cers no­ticed a sil­ver Kia Cer­a­to parked at the side of the road with a man and woman in­side.

Po­lice stopped and ques­tioned the cou­ple, who they said gave in­con­sis­tent ac­counts of what they were do­ing in the area at that hour.

The sus­pects were ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the 23-year-old man and 22-year-old woman are both from Port of Spain.

An of­fi­cer in the East­ern Di­vi­sion told Guardian Me­dia Ltd that the ar­rests were tes­ta­ment to the work and com­mit­ment of po­lice in tack­ling home in­va­sions.

"We have tak­en a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to these crimes and what we have been notic­ing is an in­flux of peo­ple from the Port of Spain and West­ern Di­vi­sions who are com­ing in­to the com­mu­ni­ty to stage at­tacks and rob­beries.

"But the CID, San­gre Grande and the East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force are work­ing hard to deal with this."