Derek Achong

While his friends and fel­low par­ty­go­ers watched help­less­ly, a 21-year-old man was shot dead in San­gre Grande on Sat­ur­day night. Shel­don Burke, of Sou Sou Lands, Cu­nar­ipo, was stand­ing in front of a pop­u­lar fast food out­let on the East­ern Main Road, at around 10.20 pm, when a dark coloured ve­hi­cle pulled up along­side him.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports the dri­ver of the ve­hi­cle drew a gun and opened fire on Burke, hit­ting him five times about the body. As Burke col­lapsed on the pave­ment, the gun­man quick­ly fled the scene. Burke was tak­en to the San­gre Grande Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal by friends and cu­ri­ous on­look­ers. He was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival. His body was tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James where an au­top­sy will be con­duct­ed lat­er to­day.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the ar­rest of Burke's killer was im­mi­nent, as sev­er­al eye­wit­ness­es pro­vid­ed de­scrip­tions of the gun­man and his get­away ve­hi­cle to homi­cide de­tec­tives who vis­it­ed the scene. Burke's mur­der brought the mur­der toll for the year to 186.

Mean­while, in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to the shoot­ing of two neigh­bours in San­gre Grande on Fri­day night. Re­ports state that around 10 pm on Fri­day Clint Lutch­man, 24, and Bevon Lewis, 25, were play­ing cards on the road­way near their North East­ern Set­tle­ment homes when a sil­ver Nis­san Almera re­port­ed­ly pulled in front of them.

The oc­cu­pants of the car drew guns and be­gan shoot­ing at the men. De­spite scam­per­ing from the scene, both men sus­tained gun­shot in­juries. Lutch­man was shot in his chest and ab­domen while Lewis was shot in the right arm. Both men were tak­en to hos­pi­tal where they re­mained ward­ed in se­ri­ous con­di­tion up to late yes­ter­day.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are yet to es­tab­lish mo­tives for both shoot­ings. ASP Neville Sankar, Sgt Ken Lutch­man (no re­la­tion to vic­tim) and Cpl Harp­er of the San­gre Grande CID are lead­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dents.