Trinidad’s ‘most wanted’ killed near police station

(Trinidad Guardian) One of the coun­try’s most “Want­ed” and “Dan­ger­ous” man was gunned down sev­er­al feet away from the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion sec­onds af­ter he walked out from the charge room on Sat­ur­day night.

It is sus­pect­ed that the as­sailants fol­lowed Hara­dath “H” Solomon, 42, of Mis­sion Road, Freeport, to the sta­tion, where he had gone to get his book signed by of­fi­cers as proof that he was still in the coun­try on or­ders hand­ed down by a mag­is­trate in a court mat­ter he was in­volved in.

 
The gun­men wait­ed out­side the sta­tion along the Mis­sion Road un­til he walked out and then they drove past him with and the oc­cu­pants opened fire on their tar­get.

Solomon was hit just out­side the Lot­to and Play Whe booth just west of the sta­tion, less than 100 feet away.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors who processed the scene on Sat­ur­day night re­cov­ered over 16 spent shells on the scene. The in­ci­dent oc­curred at about 7 pm.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice sources, Solomon was put on the po­lice’s “radar” about five months ago, af­ter they re­ceived in­tel­li­gence that he was plan­ning a high-pro­file kid­nap­ping. He had many places of abode, in­clud­ing Mor­vant and Ari­ma.

At the crime scene, sev­er­al rel­a­tives of Solomon showed up but did not com­ment on his death. How­ev­er, a close as­so­ciate of Solomon told Guardian Me­dia that while he was on the po­lice watch list, Solomon “in the end, was not ever con­vict­ed on any crimes…be­ing a sus­pect doesn’t mean he was re­al­ly in­volved in any­thing that the po­lice said he was in…all are in­no­cent un­til proven guilty…but what I can say is that for a long time peo­ple want­ed him dead…He was a busi­ness­man in his own rights.”

Po­lice said Solomon was a sus­pect is sev­er­al kid­nap­pings to­geth­er with re­put­ed gang leader Sel­wyn “Robo­cop” Alex­is. Solomon was al­so a sus­pect in sev­er­al rob­beries, break-ins and sus­pect­ed to be the head of a car-steal­ing ring in the En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas area.

Po­lice said Solomon was the “last man stand­ing” from Alex­is’ era. Alex­is was gunned down on Ju­ly 17, 2016, while at his En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas busi­ness. Alex­is, cus­tomer Kevin Es­cayg, of San Juan and Es­cayg’s then four-year-old son Kir­chard Scott were shot sev­er­al times as a group of gun­men am­bushed them at Alex­is’ car-wash at Free­dom Street at about 4.30 pm.

In 2017, po­lice cracked a ma­jor case in­volv­ing theft of bank funds, with the ar­rest and sub­se­quent pros­e­cu­tion of Solomon in con­nec­tion with the break-in and theft of $3,030,000 from First Cit­i­zens’ Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas branch some­time be­tween Sep­tem­ber 22 and 24, 2017. Thieves gained ac­cess to the bank by priz­ing open the bur­glar proof­ing and a win­dow on the south­ern side of the build­ing. No part of the stolen mon­ey has ever been re­cov­ered.

The pre­vi­ous break­through came on De­cem­ber 18, 2017, when four per­sons ap­peared be­fore an Ari­ma mag­is­trate charged with the $5 mil­lion heist from an ar­moured se­cu­ri­ty ve­hi­cle the at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on De­cem­ber 6, 2017.

Solomon was al­so charged with pos­ses­sion of two grammes of mar­i­jua­na, which were al­leged­ly found on his per­son when he was de­tained for ques­tion­ing by the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment, on De­cem­ber 14, 2017.

On De­cem­ber 20, 2017, Solomon, 40, ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Jo-Anne Con­nor in the Ch­agua­nas First Mag­is­trate’s Court charged with house break-in and lar­ce­ny.