A 23-year-old footballer with Digicel Pro League outfit Police FC was wounded by police in a shooting in Cocorite yesterday morning. According to police reports around 2.30 am, officers of the St James Police Station received a report of a incident along the Western Main Road in Cocorite. A group of officers responded and confronted three men who were seated in a Nissan Almera parked at the roadside. Investigators said that upon seeing the officers, the driver of the vehicle attempted to drive away but crashed into the police vehicle.
Police said that one of the occupants began shooting at them and they returned fire. The suspects, from Simon Valley, St Ann’s, were eventually arrested. One of the captured suspects, later identified as Police FC defender Jevon Morris, was shot twice in the head. The other two suspects were unharmed. Morris remained warded under police guard in stable condition up to late yesterday. Investigators said that a 9 mm firearm and 13 rounds of ammunition were recovered in the vehicle. The shooting sparked protest from residents of Simon Valley who yesterday morning blocked the road near the Fondes Amandes bridge to protest the shooting. Clevon McFee, Morris’s friend and an eyewitness to the incident, was at the protest and explained what happened.
He said about 1 am, he and his friends, Morris and Andel Moore among them, returned from a cruise aboard the Harbour Master. “A car pulled up behind me, popped the horn and a man come out, hold me, and say he is police,” McFee said. “He had a bottle in his hand, and Andel knocked it out his hand,” he added. He said Morris pulled Moore away, put him in the car, and decided to leave.“A police jeep pulled up, block their car and started shooting. Jevon and Andel jump out and the police continued shooting at them,” he added. During the melee, Morris was wounded.
“I asked the police if I could carry him to the hospital and they let me take him to Port-of-Spain General Hospital,” he said. Morris’s mother, Patricia Morris said the police told her Jevon was a “prisoner,” but no charges had been laid. “The police say they searched the car and found a gun, and how Jevon obstruct arrest,” she added.