One arrested after police-involved shooting in Santa Cruz

One man has been ar­rest­ed and a cache of il­le­gal am­mu­ni­tion and cannabis seized fol­low­ing a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion last night.

Re­ports in­di­cate of­fi­cers were on mo­bile pa­trol around 10:45 pm on Sun­day 28 June 2026 when they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about a sus­pi­cious ve­hi­cle in the Pax Vale, San­ta Cruz dis­trict. Up­on ar­rival, of­fi­cers ob­served the ve­hi­cle which al­leged­ly sped off prompt­ing a pur­suit with sirens and emer­gency lights ac­ti­vat­ed.

Dur­ing the chase the ve­hi­cle was in­ter­cept­ed along Pos­i­tive Street where an armed oc­cu­pant re­port­ed­ly ex­it­ed the rear and fired two shots at the po­lice ve­hi­cle. In ac­cor­dance with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice Use of Force Pol­i­cy an of­fi­cer re­turned fire in the di­rec­tion of the as­sailant who fled in­to an emp­ty par­cel of land and es­caped.

Of­fi­cers then ap­proached the aban­doned ve­hi­cle and de­tained the dri­ver with­out fur­ther in­ci­dent.

A search of the ve­hi­cle un­cov­ered 146 cannabis plants packed in three card­board box­es lo­cat­ed in the trunk.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so dis­cov­ered a Glock pis­tol fit­ted with two mag­a­zines con­tain­ing 34 rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion. Po­lice con­firmed that the de­tained sus­pect pro­duced a Firearm User’s Li­cence book­let for the weapon.

Fur­ther en­quiries led of­fi­cers to the sus­pect’s home where a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion not list­ed in the FUL book­let was al­leged­ly found. An ad­di­tion­al quan­ti­ty of cannabis was al­so seized dur­ing the search.

Po­lice say in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing as they con­tin­ue to de­ter­mine the iden­ti­ty and where­abouts of the armed oc­cu­pant who es­caped the scene as well as the full ex­tent of the al­leged crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty con­nect­ed to the seized items.

Au­thor­i­ties re­it­er­at­ed their com­mit­ment to tack­ling firearms and nar­cotics traf­fick­ing across the di­vi­sion not­ing that pa­trols and in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions will con­tin­ue. They al­so urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty as in­ves­ti­ga­tions progress. Po­lice said up­dates will be pro­vid­ed as more in­for­ma­tion be­comes avail­able in­clud­ing the sta­tus of the es­caped sus­pect and any ad­di­tion­al charges that may arise from foren­sic analy­sis of the seized items and re­cov­ered firearms ev­i­dence.

No fur­ther de­tails have been re­leased by po­lice at this time of­fi­cial­ly stat­ed.