Trinidad: Residents confront cops after police killing of well-known Sea Lots gang­ster

(Trinidad Guardian) Po­lice shot dead well-known Sea Lots gang­ster, Aki­ni “Dole” Adams and in­jured an­oth­er man dur­ing an ex­er­cise on Thurs­day evening.

Po­lice said they went in­to the area to con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mur­ders of four peo­ple in Las Cuevas.

 
Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­port, they con­front­ed Adams and three oth­er men and at­tempt­ed to de­tain them for ques­tion­ing.

Po­lice say one of the men drew a firearm and the po­lice re­spond­ed by open­ing fire.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents dis­put­ed the po­lice re­ports, claim­ing that the men were un­armed. One of the men was wound­ed and tak­en by po­lice for med­ical treat­ment while the oth­er es­caped.

Res­i­dents of Sea Lots re­spond­ed an­gri­ly to the po­lice shoot­ings, and ver­bal­ly con­front­ed po­lice of­fi­cers at the scene.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, mem­bers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team and sev­er­al oth­er po­lice units were de­ployed to dis­perse the protest­ing res­i­dents.

Sev­er­al peo­ple were ar­rest­ed for ob­struc­tion and oth­er of­fences.

Grif­fith told the res­i­dents that the po­lice would con­tin­ue to ar­rest them if they ob­struct­ed the of­fi­cers.

Po­lice told Guardian Me­dia that Adams was al­so a sus­pect in the at­tacks on 12 Car­li Bay fish­er­men, sev­en of whom were thrown over­board Tues­day night and had their boats stolen.

It is be­lieved that one of the stolen boats was used by the killers to es­cape af­ter the mur­ders of Las Cuevas gang leader Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres, his wife and two body­guards ear­li­er in the day.

The shoot­ing raised fears of protests along the Beetham High­way.

How­ev­er, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is­sued a state­ment as­sur­ing the pub­lic that “all is back to calm in the Sea Lots area”.

“There is no need for un­due anx­i­ety to en­ter or ex­it Port-of-Spain. The Po­lice Ser­vice and the De­fence Force are on pa­trol in the area,” the state­ment said.

It added that Na­tion­al Min­is­ter Stu­art Young met with the Chief of De­fence Staff and oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials on the in­ci­dent, with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment be­ing de­ployed on the ground in sup­port of the Po­lice Ser­vice, and the Coast Guard in the wa­ters of the Sea Lots area.

Adams was held by po­lice in March 2017 for the mur­der of WPC Nyasha Joseph but was sub­se­quent­ly re­leased.

WPC Joseph, who was at­tached to the Mor­vant Po­lice Sta­tion, was re­port­ed miss­ing on March 10, 2017 af­ter she did not ap­pear for work and rel­a­tives tried to con­tact her on her cell phone with­out suc­cess.

Her body was found tan­gled in a fish­er­man’s net in the mouth of the Ca­roni Riv­er on March 15, 2017.