Home invasion suspect remanded; bail denied

A 23-year-old man from Princes Town has been re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody af­ter ap­pear­ing be­fore the court last Fri­day on charges re­lat­ed to a vi­o­lent home in­va­sion.

The ac­cused was brought be­fore Mas­ter Sookraj Goswa­mi at South Court A, where he was not re­quired to en­ter a plea. Goswa­mi de­nied bail and is­sued a sched­ul­ing or­der, set­ting De­cem­ber as the date for a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, the in­ci­dent oc­curred in the ear­ly hours of May 30. At ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5:00 a.m., a 24-year-old res­i­dent awoke to find an in­trud­er armed with a knife in­side his bed­room. A strug­gle fol­lowed, dur­ing which the vic­tim sus­tained mi­nor in­juries. The sus­pect fled through a bushy area at the rear of the prop­er­ty.

Of­fi­cers from the Princes Town Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment and the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion re­spond­ed swift­ly, se­cur­ing the scene and con­duct­ing in­ter­views with wit­ness­es and near­by res­i­dents. The sus­pect was lo­cat­ed a short dis­tance away and ar­rest­ed. He was pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied by the vic­tim.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors processed the prop­er­ty and re­cov­ered foren­sic ev­i­dence, in­clud­ing work­able fin­ger­prints. Fol­low­ing fur­ther en­quiries and un­der the guid­ance of se­nior of­fi­cers, the sus­pect was for­mal­ly charged with the of­fence of home in­va­sion.

The mat­ter is be­ing pros­e­cut­ed un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice. In a state­ment, the ser­vice re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to the swift in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of vi­o­lent crimes, par­tic­u­lar­ly home in­va­sions, which have raised pub­lic con­cern in re­cent months. Au­thor­i­ties al­so en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to re­main vig­i­lant and re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty to law en­force­ment.