Cops kill 2 in shoot-out High drama after DVD vendor gunned down in Port-of-Spain

Extracted from the Trinidad Express

THERE are conflicting reports about the events that occurred between Broadway in Port of Spain and the Beetham Gardens late Wednesday night which left three men dead- one of them murdered and the other two killed at the hands of police.

On one side, there is the police's version of events that led to the murder of DVD vendor Anderson Bynoe, 36, and the subsequent killing of Fabian Mauge, 26, and Ricky Roberts, 25, in what police said was a shoot-out with the two as they tried to intercept their car in the Beetham Gardens.

The relatives of the dead men, however, said they were unarmed when they were shot on Wednesday night.

Yesterday, police said the two men were part of a group that had murdered Bynoe about 45 minutes before they were killed by officers.

According to a senior officer who spoke to the Express, around 10.15 p.m., Bynoe was at his stall located just outside Bhaggan's Drugs on Broadway.

Bynoe, officers said, currently lived in Arima but had previously resided at Beetham Gardens until he was forced to leave due to threats made against his life by other residents. A white Nissan B-15 Sentra stopped outside the drugstore, police said, and two men came out the car, pulled out guns and walked over to Bynoe. They shot him several times at close range, and as he slumped to the pavement, the gunmen walked over to where he lay and shot him several more times, killing him on the spot.

Someone saw what happened and called the police's E-999 command centre. The command centre, in turn, alerted officers on patrol to be on the look-out for the white Nissan.

Around 11.15 p.m., the white Nissan was spotted by a group of Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) officers in the Beetham Gardens area, officers said. The officers went after the car and intercepted it at 18th Street, Beetham Gardens.

Police said four men came out of the car and started firing at them. The police fired back, hitting three men and two of them, Mauge and Roberts, fell to the ground.

The third man who was shot managed to escape briefly until he was held later by the police while attempting to seek treatment at a Cocorite hospital. A fourth man remained at large up to last night.

Police said they seized a .38 pistol as well as a 9 mm handgun.