Home invasion suspect killed in police shooting in Cunupia

A po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing dur­ing a re­port­ed home in­va­sion in Cunu­pia ear­ly this morn­ing has left one sus­pect dead and prompt­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Ac­cord­ing to a TTPS me­dia re­lease, of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a re­port of a “man on premis­es” around 4.30 am af­ter the E999 Com­mand Cen­tre re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that in­trud­ers were in­side a house whose own­ers were re­port­ed­ly out of the coun­try.

Of­fi­cers at­tached to the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force and the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent. Po­lice said that up­on ar­riv­ing at the lo­ca­tion, of­fi­cers heard crash­ing sounds com­ing from in­side the build­ing.

The re­lease stat­ed that of­fi­cers iden­ti­fied them­selves be­fore en­ter­ing the premis­es in ac­cor­dance with the TTPS Use of Force Pol­i­cy.

Po­lice re­port­ed that af­ter en­ter­ing the house, of­fi­cers were con­front­ed by a man of mixed de­scent who was armed with what ap­peared to be a firearm.

The TTPS said the sus­pect en­gaged the of­fi­cers, who feared for their lives and re­spond­ed by dis­charg­ing their ser­vice-is­sued firearms in the di­rec­tion of the threat.

The sus­pect was in­jured dur­ing the ex­change and lat­er trans­port­ed to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty for med­ical treat­ment. How­ev­er, he suc­cumbed to his in­juries short­ly af­ter ar­riv­ing at the in­sti­tu­tion.

Po­lice al­so con­firmed that a firearm was re­cov­ered at the scene.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro com­mend­ed the re­spond­ing of­fi­cers for their ac­tions and is­sued a stern warn­ing to in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Let this in­ci­dent serve as an un­mis­tak­able warn­ing to any­one who be­lieves they can ter­rorise com­mu­ni­ties or vi­o­late the sanc­ti­ty of peo­ple’s homes,” Gue­var­ro said.

He added that of­fi­cers would con­tin­ue to act “de­ci­sive­ly, law­ful­ly, and with­out hes­i­ta­tion” in pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens and com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.

Gue­var­ro al­so de­scribed home in­va­sions as “cal­cu­lat­ed acts of vi­o­lence” aimed at ter­ror­is­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and as­sured the pub­lic that the TTPS would con­tin­ue re­spond­ing with ur­gency and the nec­es­sary force to con­front such crimes.