(Trinidad Express) Police shot and killed a Belmont man at his home yesterday, when he reportedly pointed a gun at them.
He is the 23rd person killed by police for the year.
Police said around 9.15 a.m., officers went to the Walcott Lane, Belmont, home of Celestine “Dutties” Richards, 31. His other alias was “Six”.
They stormed the house and confronted him in his bedroom.
Officers said when they entered the bedroom, Richards had a gun in his hand and had raised it at them. but before he was able to squeeze off a round they opened fire on him.
They then grabbed his gun, took him out of the house and dropped him off at the Port of Spain General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
The Express later visited his relatives at his home, where his mother, Gail Jack, and girlfriend spoke.
The girlfriend, who did not want to be named, said since Monday he had been saying the police wanted to kill him.
She said she was at work yesterday morning when she got a call from a neighbour that the police had just shot him.
She added that he had a previous encounter with the police when he was detained on May 2022 on murder enquiries, questioned for a day, then released.
Jack, however, claimed her son goes nowhere and usually stayed close to home.
Police raid my home
She said last week Friday the police raided his home, where they met him with a man named Micah Cipriani, 34, who lived at Roslyn Street, Belmont.
She claimed officers had beaten the man and left.
Around 5.55 p.m. on Monday, Cipriani was shot and killed near St Margaret’s Lane, Belmont.
Jack said she got a “feeling” yesterday morning that something would have happened to him.
“His killing was unjust and I cannot do anything about it, but they could have shot him in his foot and not his chest. They come to kill him,” she said.
Viola Belgrove, Richards’ 92-year-old neighbour, spoke highly of him, saying: “To me, he was a very nice guy.
“I don’t know him to be in any trouble, but he was always out here liming and he spoke sense, too.”
