Two men who are al­leged mem­bers of “Tren De Aragua”, a Latin Amer­i­can gang be­lieved to be op­er­at­ing and sell­ing il­le­gal firearms in Trinidad and To­ba­go have been shot and killed by po­lice in Table­land.

The of­fi­cers said they were act­ing in self de­fence.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), at 5:30 AM on Fri­day April 4, of­fi­cers of the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that mem­bers of the gang were at a house along the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road.

The house is a two-sto­ry con­crete struc­ture with two ad­join­ing struc­tures on ei­ther side.

Due to the lay­out of the struc­ture, the par­ty of of­fi­cers split in­to four small­er teams to sur­round the home.

One of the teams went to a garage area and no­ticed an open­ing. The po­lice said they an­nounced their pres­ence by shout­ing, “Po­lice Po­lice!”

The of­fi­cers pro­ceed­ed in­side and with the use of flash­lights dis­cov­ered two men be­lieved to be of Latin Amer­i­can de­scent who were al­so speak­ing what they de­scribed as a “for­eign lan­guage.”

The po­lice say when they were six feet away from the men, they no­ticed one of them point­ing a chrome coloured ob­ject at them re­sem­bling a firearm while an­oth­er one of the sus­pects held a chrome coloured chop­per in his right hand.

Of­fi­cers say both men start­ed to ad­vance on them de­spite their in­struc­tions to, “drop the gun!”

The po­lice say they heard the armed sus­pect’s gun make a click­ing sound, while the man with the chop­per was still walk­ing to­wards them an­gri­ly, and be­liev­ing their lives were in dan­ger, they shot at both men at­tempt­ing to dis­arm them.

The al­leged gang mem­bers were tak­en to Princes Town Health Fa­cil­i­ty but they were pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

The po­lice say sev­er­al items of “ev­i­den­tial val­ue” were re­trieved from the scene.