Kevon Felmine

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice killed two sus­pect­ed mur­der­ers less than 30 min­utes af­ter the pair gunned down a Cunu­pia busi­ness­man.

The mur­der of 40-year-old Dar­ryl Painter took the 2014 toll to 70, at the rate of a mur­der every 15 hours, ac­cord­ing to a Bul­let Points tal­ly. The equiv­a­lent toll for this pe­ri­od in 2013 was 56, with a mur­der oc­cur­ring every 20 hours.

Painter's killing is the eighth mur­der in cen­tral Trinidad for 2014.

The dead sus­pects brought to three the num­ber of po­lice killings in the area for the week.

Painter was shot dead while sell­ing Valen­tine Day gifts next to the Evening Light Taber­na­cle along South­ern Main Road, Cunu­pia.

His at­tack­ers, who were caught af­ter a high speed chase, were shot mul­ti­ple times by po­lice dur­ing a shootout near the Preysal In­ter­change at Cou­va. They have not been iden­ti­fied.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Painter was stand­ing at the road­side when he was ap­proached by two men. Af­ter a short con­ver­sa­tion, one of the men whipped out a gun and shot Painter sev­er­al times about the body.

Eye­wit­ness­es said the gun­man laughed loud­ly while shoot­ing Painter and when his mag­a­zine was emp­tied, he pulled out an­oth­er gun and con­tin­ued shoot­ing.

The shoot­er and a sec­ond man then es­caped in a stolen white Maz­da 3.

Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Supt John­ny Abra­ham and In­sp of CID Ter­rence Williams co­or­di­nat­ed the po­lice re­sponse, with tac­ti­cal units, South­ern Di­vi­sion High­way Pa­trol and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty he­li­copter sur­vey­ing the area. Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered more than 10 spent shells at the scene.

Of­fi­cers spot­ted the car trav­el­ling south along the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way. On near­ing the Preysal In­ter­change, the gun­men ditched the car and at­tempt­ed to es­cape in some bush­es. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, when they gave chase the gun­men be­gan fir­ing shots at them. The of­fi­cers re­turned fire and both sus­pects were struck sev­er­al times. They were tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Cen­tre where they were pro­nounced dead on ar­rival. Of­fi­cers al­so re­cov­ered two pis­tols.

Po­lice are not cer­tain of a mo­tive but said Painter was known to them for his in­volve­ment in a kid­nap­ping sev­er­al years ago. Po­lice said Painter had ad­dress­es in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, San Fer­nan­do and Tu­na­puna.

Po­lice have al­ready held one mur­der sus­pect while an­oth­er one is be­ing ques­tioned.