Trinidad: Cops kill bandit in shootout after bar robbery

(Trinidad Guardian) A dar­ing rob­bery at a San Fer­nan­do bar Sat­ur­day was short-lived for a ban­dit who was killed dur­ing a shootout with po­lice.

He has been iden­ti­fied as Dil­lon Clarke of La Ro­maine.

Re­ports stat­ed that around 1 am, Clarke, who was armed with a pis­tol, and an­oth­er ban­dit en­tered Bal’s Bar along Phillip­ine Road in Her­mitage Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do and or­dered pa­trons and em­ploy­ees to lie on the floor. There were 10 pa­trons in the bar at the time. One of the ban­dits then en­tered the area be­hind the counter, steal­ing the night’s sale, cig­a­rettes, a lap­top and oth­er items.

The oth­er ban­dit searched the pa­trons, steal­ing mo­bile phones, cash and oth­er valu­ables. They al­so took the pa­trons’ keys to their ve­hi­cles.

But one of the vic­tims was able to con­tact po­lice dur­ing the rob­bery and of­fi­cers from the La Ro­maine Po­lice Post who were pa­trolling the area re­spond­ed quick­ly. Po­lice said as of­fi­cers ap­proached the bar, one of the ban­dits ran off while an­oth­er shot of them. The of­fi­cers re­turned fire, hit­ting the gun­man sev­er­al times. He col­lapsed on the road­side and died with­in min­utes.

One fe­male vic­tim who did not want to be iden­ti­fied told Guardian Me­dia that she and her friend were ly­ing on the floor when one of the ban­dits pulled her chain. She said af­ter see­ing that her friend’s chain was big­ger, the ban­dit strug­gled and man­aged to un­hook her friend’s chain be­fore they fled the scene. She said af­ter a mo­ment of si­lence they heard gun­shots, which cre­at­ed more pan­ic in­side the bar.

“Our im­pres­sion was that they (ban­dits) was shoot­ing at the bar, now to re­alise af­ter the gun­shots stopped that it was ac­tu­al­ly the po­lice. How­ev­er, it was when the po­lice came in we re­alised what was go­ing on,” the shak­en woman said.

Of­fi­cers re­cov­ered a loaded pis­tol from the dead ban­dit. A grey Nis­san AD Wag­on was al­so seized. A search con­tin­ued yes­ter­day for the oth­er sus­pect.

The of­fi­cers were praised for their work by an em­ploy­ee who said they re­spond­ed with­in five min­utes of the call for help. The bar re­mained open for busi­ness yes­ter­day.