Police officer shot by robbery suspects dies at hospital

File: Hayden Manwaring

Police sergeant Hayden Manwaring died at the San Fernando General Hospital Tuesday night following emergency surgery for a gunshot wound suffered during a fight with a robbery suspect. The injury was inflicted with the police officer's own gun.

Manwaring was 43. He was married, with two children and lived at ROYSTONIA, Couva.

The suspect wrestled the officer's gun and shot him in the abdomen. Two surgeons at the hospital spent three hours operating on Manwaring but their effort did not save the officer's life.

According to media reports the gunshot injury was close to the kidney and there was a large amount of blood loss. Manwaring died in the Intensive Care Unit.

His collegue, Constable Nicholas Phillip, who was shot in the arm during the same incident, is being treated at hospital. Manwaring is the seventh police officer to be killed in the line of duty since 2002.

Newsday photo shows arrest of suspect in shooting of police officers

Police have arrested four suspects. One of them has been shot and is in hospital.

The murder of the policeman is just one of the 62 killings recorded so far this year. Many have been savage and brutal, including another on Tuesday in which a farmer was hacked to death with his own cutlass. 

File: Jack Warner 

Commenting on the upsurge in crime, National Security Minister Jack Warner told the Newsday newspaper: "There is no way...the law enforcement agencies in this country will succumb to the kind of mayhem that criminals want to inflict on law-abiding citizens."

He added, "I remain convinced that the law enforcement officers — the Police Service, the Defence Force, the Coast Guard and the Air Guard shall overcome...they are on top of the crime situation. 

"They have discussed with me their various strategies, which I am not at liberty to disclose. I remain convinced that eventually they shall succeed and we shall overcome. They still have my full confidence...At the end of the day I know that the police and law-enforcement agencies in the country shall overcome.”