The com­mu­ni­ty of Sun Val­ley Ex­ten­sion at La Canoa Road in Low­er San­ta Cruz re­mained qui­et yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing a shoot­ing on Sat­ur­day night which claimed the lives of two men.

The vic­tims were iden­ti­fied as An­ge­lo Le­an­dre, of Sun Val­ley Ex­ten­sion, La Canoa Road, Low­er San­ta Cruz, and Je­re­mi­ah Brit­to, of La Canoa Road, Low­er San­ta Cruz.

Of­fi­cers from the San Juan Po­lice Sta­tion were re­port­ed­ly on mo­bile pa­trol around 8.20 pm on Sat­ur­day, when they re­ceived re­ports of a shoot­ing in the area.

Up­on ar­rival, they found Le­an­dre, 31, a labour­er, bleed­ing from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds at the side of the road. He was al­ready dead.

Fol­low­ing en­quiries, they were in­formed by res­i­dents that Brit­to had been rushed to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, by a fe­male res­i­dent liv­ing close by. Of­fi­cers went to the hos­pi­tal, where they were in­formed that Brit­to died at 8.50 pm.

Re­ports in­di­cate that Le­an­dre had been wash­ing his gold Nis­san Almera at a com­mu­nal spot along Sun Val­ley Ex­ten­sion when sev­er­al gun­men walked up and opened fire on him. It was al­leged that as he tried to run away, the sus­pects pur­sued him and shot him sev­er­al more times be­fore flee­ing on foot.

Brit­to, who was re­port­ed­ly stand­ing a short dis­tance away, was shot dur­ing the melee.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit (SERU) re­cov­ered 18 spent 9mm shell cas­ings at the scene.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day, res­i­dents in close prox­im­i­ty to where the shoot­ing oc­curred de­clined to speak.

The mur­der toll for the year rose to 313 fol­low­ing the in­cid­nent. - An­na-Lisa Paul