An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A shootout be­tween po­lice and gun­men along the East­ern Main Road, Tu­na­puna, on Wednes­day night, left two men dead, one in­jured and a sus­pect on the run.

One of the dead men was iden­ti­fied as foot­baller Jer­ry Mor­ris, who was a mem­ber of the UTT Pa­tri­ots team.

The in­ci­dent, around 9.25 pm, sent peo­ple scam­per­ing to get out of the fir­ing line.

Po­lice sources said of­fi­cers on pa­trol in St Joseph were alert­ed that gun­shots had been heard com­ing from the PTSC Bus Ter­mi­nal in Curepe. When the of­fi­cers ar­rived on the scene, they saw four men en­ter­ing a red car. They at­tempt­ed to in­ter­cept the ve­hi­cle but the dri­ver sped off.

It was al­leged the sus­pects fired at of­fi­cers and there was a high-speed chase along the East­ern Main Road un­til the car crashed near Tu­na­puna Road. There was an ex­change of gun­fire.

Two sus­pects man­aged to es­cape and two oth­ers were found suf­fer­ing from gun­shot wounds in the car. They were tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, where they were pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

A 56-year-old man from Five Rivers, Arou­ca, was lat­er found suf­fer­ing from a wound to the right leg. He was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to hos­pi­tal for treat­ment, where he re­mained hos­pi­talised un­der po­lice guard yes­ter­day.

Of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly re­cov­ered a re­volver and a pis­tol with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing sev­er­al rounds of am­mu­ni­tion in the car, along with cloth­ing and oth­er items.

For­mer na­tion­al foot­ball cap­tain Clay­ton Mor­ris ex­pressed shock at the young foot­baller’s death. He said the 22-year-old strik­er, who lived in Ari­ma, did not turn up for prac­tice on Wednes­day night. Mor­ris said they were not re­lat­ed and last in­ter­act­ed at Mon­day’s train­ing ses­sion when he ar­rived late to prac­tice.

He de­scribed the de­ceased as a “very tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­ual” and added: “Up to Mon­day, I had a very long talk with them.

“Jer­ry was a very jovial per­son. He is the one that would make every­body laugh. At the same time, he looked for the easy way out to do things on the field, al­ways try to out­smart ... which is good as a strik­er.”

Mor­ris (C) said this was in­dica­tive that Mor­ris (J), “some­times pre­ferred to go the easy way than to put in the work in or­der to get.”

Jer­ry Mor­ris was in his sec­ond sea­son with the UTT club. The team was sched­uled to train last night and had a game sched­uled for this week­end.

“If it were up to me, I would want to go on the field and play for him, in his ho­n­our, but it will be their de­ci­sion,” the coach said.

The UTT Sport and Recre­ation Unit (SRU) ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, friends, and col­leagues of Jer­ry Mor­ris.