Suspect in prison officer shooting dies

Days af­ter po­lice re­leased one of two sus­pects held in re­la­tion to the at­tempt­ed mur­der of a prison of­fi­cer, the sec­ond sus­pect has died.

Ac­cord­ing to both po­lice and prison sources, Jessie Bel­fon, who was thrown out of the get­away car af­ter the shoot­ing, died ear­ly this morn­ing.

Bel­fon is be­lieved to have been the shoot­er. Po­lice are search­ing for a third sus­pect, whom they have al­ready iden­ti­fied. The man was cap­tured walk­ing away calm­ly af­ter the get­away car crashed.

On Tues­day, the first sus­pect was re­leased af­ter po­lice said there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to keep him in cus­tody. Po­lice were hop­ing to ques­tion Bel­fon, who re­mained crit­i­cal­ly in­jured since his ad­mit­tance to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex last Fri­day night.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­port, Govin­dra Bal­go­b­in, 38, was am­bushed and shot by gun­men who pulled along­side him in a Nis­san Wingroad along Or­ange Grove Road around 8.25 pm on June 20.

Po­lice are work­ing on the the­o­ry that the at­tack was linked to an in­ci­dent at the Port-of-Spain Prison. Prison of­fi­cials said a fe­male rel­a­tive of an in­mate at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, where Bal­go­b­in is sta­tioned, had an al­ter­ca­tion with an of­fi­cer and her vis­it was can­celled.

Prison of­fi­cials say Bal­go­b­in lost feel­ing in his legs and re­mains ward­ed in a se­ri­ous con­di­tion as he awaits hip re­place­ment surgery be­cause of mul­ti­ple frac­tures.

He was shot in the right side arm, tor­so, hip and up­per right side leg.