Trinidad: Dying bandit gives police wrong name

(Trinidad Guardian) David Phillip, the al­leged ban­dit who was fa­tal­ly shot dur­ing a rob­bery in Fyz­abad on Wednes­day is ac­tu­al­ly Gary Govin­dass of Fyz­abad.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ves­ti­ga­tors, when po­lice found Govin­dass bleed­ing in the bush­es near the Pick­er’s Sports Bar & Longue that he and an ac­com­plice had at­tempt­ed to rob, he gave con­flict­ing names. David Phillip of Point Fortin was one of those alias­es that he gave. How­ev­er, Govin­dass’ fa­ther vis­it­ed po­lice yes­ter­day to con­firm his iden­ti­ty.

Fyz­abad po­lice led by In­sp Seecha­ran, Sgt Ban­mal­ly, Cpl Gokool and Cpl Williams re­spond­ed to a shoot­ing at the bar along But­ler Av­enue, Fyz­abad. They learned that around 3 pm, Govin­dass and his ac­com­plice en­tered the sports bar and be­gan play­ing on a roulette game ma­chine op­er­at­ed by a Chi­nese na­tion­al. Af­ter a few min­utes, Govin­dass whipped out a gun and an­nounced a rob­bery. Af­ter notic­ing that the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer on du­ty was armed, he fired a shot, which struck the guard in the left side of his back. But as the 52-year-old guard hit the floor, he with­drew his firearm and shot Govin­dass.

Govin­dass and his ac­com­plice then ran out of the bar with­out steal­ing any­thing. As of­fi­cers viewed a shat­tered glass pane, they saw a trail of blood. They fol­lowed it and found Govin­dass ly­ing in the bush­es op­po­site the Dol­lar Val­ue store. He was bleed­ing from wounds on his foot and ab­domen.

While speak­ing to him, he be­gan to lose con­scious­ness and the of­fi­cers called for the Emer­gency Med­ical Ser­vices. How­ev­er, para­medics found that Govin­dass was un­re­spon­sive and when they checked, he had not to pulse. A Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer was con­tact­ed and af­ter con­firm­ing Govin­dass’ death, he or­dered that his body be tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre where an au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be done on Fri­day. In­ves­ti­ga­tors were look­ing in­to his crim­i­nal record yes­ter­day as they be­lieve that he has pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions.

The guard was tak­en to the Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty where he was treat­ed and lat­er trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he was ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion.