Camille Clarke

The mur­der toll jumped to 68 yes­ter­day af­ter the killing of a 35-year-old man in Ari­ma on Sun­day night. An­to­nio Col­in Mur­ray, of Pt Cumana, To­co, was found ly­ing on the Ari­ma Old Road. He had mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds to the head, po­lice said. De­tec­tives be­lieve Mur­ray was killed else­where and his body dumped in Ari­ma. Cpl Jones of the Homi­cide Bu­reau is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Over the week­end, four oth­er men were killed in Diego Mar­tin in what po­lice said was gang war­fare.

Ny­ron Fran­cis, 24, a mail­man, of Sea Av­enue, and Keron Smith, 21, were shot dead at Blue Basin, Diego Mar­tin, on Fri­day night. Kir­by Velox, of San­dale Av­enue, and Isa­iah Woods, 21, of La Puer­ta Av­enue, were killed on Sat­ur­day evening at La Puer­ta Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, Fran­cis' fa­ther, Al­is­ter Jones, de­nied his son had been in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

Jones said Fran­cis was not "in any gang" but spent his time work­ing to care for his moth­er, Di­ane Fran­cis, a for­mer se­cu­ri­ty guard. He added: "She lost her work and he took care of her. He got a cer­tifi­cate last week in straight­en­ing and paint­ing. My son said he had to make the ex­tra dol­lar. I find all this strange and I don't know why he got killed. "We had it hard when we were younger but as he got big he went to take sev­er­al class­es and I used to tease him about it."