Passenger shot dead by police in London crossfire

A MINICAB passenger was shot dead by police after an apparent exchange of fire.

The 29-year-old, named locally as Mark Duggan, a father of four, died at the scene in Tottenham, north London, on Thursday night.

An officer may have had a lucky escape in the incident - a radio was found to have a bullet lodged in it.

Officers had been attempting to carry out an arrest under the Trident operational command unit, which deals with gun crime in the black community, according to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

Local MP David Lammy called for calm, saying the community was anxious over what had happened.

The IPCC spokesman said that at about 6:15pm on Thursday officers from Trident, accompanied by officers from the Specialist Firearms Command (CO19), stopped a minicab to carry out an arrest. "Shots were fired and a 29-year-old man, who was a passenger in the cab, died at the scene," he said.

The attempted arrest was part of a pre-planned operation under Trident.

It is believed that two shots were fired by a firearms officer, equipped with a Heckler & Koch MP5 carbine.