Sascha Wil­son

A 23-year-old home­less man was fa­tal­ly shot by po­lice out­side Re­pub­lic Bank in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The man, iden­ti­fied on­ly as “Stinky”, re­port­ed­ly got in­to a dis­pute with an­oth­er street dweller, 54-year-old Roshan Balka­ran, al­so called “Yan­kee”. 

Wit­ness­es said around 11 am the ar­gu­ment turned vi­o­lent when Stinky pulled a knife and at­tacked Balka­ran on the pave­ment in front of the bank at Low­er High Street.

Two fe­male of­fi­cers at­tached to the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice were on foot pa­trol when they saw the al­ter­ca­tion and tried to in­ter­vene.

They called on Stinky to drop the knife, but in­stead, he al­leged­ly lunged at one of them with the blade.

The fe­male of­fi­cer fired a sin­gle round, pierc­ing his ab­domen.

An­oth­er re­port stat­ed that when Stinky failed to stop, the of­fi­cer, con­cerned for the safe­ty of the vic­tim, shot him.

Both men were tak­en to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where Stinky died while un­der­go­ing treat­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to an­oth­er home­less man who wit­nessed the in­ci­dent, Stinky had a dif­fi­cult past, in­clud­ing be­ing a vic­tim of sex­u­al as­sault, which led to his drug ad­dic­tion. He said Stinky would on­ly re­act ag­gres­sive­ly when emo­tion­al­ly trig­gered.  ACP South/Cen­tral Wayne Mys­tar told Guardian Me­dia that in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the fa­tal killing are on­go­ing.

Mean­while, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said he was sad­dened over the in­ci­dent, and it demon­strates once again that men­tal health is a se­ri­ous is­sue in T&T.

He com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers, say­ing, “Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice who were on du­ty and ac­tive pa­trol must be com­mend­ed for their in­ter­ven­tion and swift ac­tion. This in­ci­dent could have eas­i­ly es­ca­lat­ed in­to a worse sit­u­a­tion.” Singh said his in­for­ma­tion was that the vic­tim suf­fered mi­nor in­juries.