A large po­lice pres­ence for a man res­i­dents de­scribed as a “peace­keep­er” to the Las Cuevas com­mu­ni­ty.

Yes­ter­day mourn­ers came out to say farewell to re­put­ed gang­ster Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres and his wife Ali­ta “Let­ty” De­here.

Mem­bers of the me­dia were barred from at­tend­ing the fu­ner­al which took place at the St Michael’s RC Church, Ho­tel Road in Las Cuevas.

Scores of peo­ple in­clud­ing chil­dren came out to bid their last good­byes. Most of them wore black as re­quest­ed by fam­i­ly mem­bers as they cel­e­brat­ed Mieres’ life.

There was al­so a heavy po­lice pres­ence in and around the sur­round­ings of the church.

Of­fi­cers al­so di­rect­ed traf­fic and se­cured the area, en­sur­ing on­ly mourn­ers were al­lowed in.

But emo­tions al­so ran high. As Mieres’ cof­fin was car­ried by pall­bear­ers from the church to the hearse his youngest son was seen run­ning be­hind cry­ing and scream­ing “Dad­dy, dad­dy.”

A woman then hurled abus­es to mem­bers of the me­dia say­ing: “Ah tell alyuh go from here...we don’t want no me­dia cov­er­age.”

Close as­so­ciates of Mieres ex­pressed dis­gust over re­ports that sur­faced in the main­stream me­dia about Mieres and his wife and claimed “bias, un­fair and mis­chie­vous re­port­ing.”

“Sand­man and his wife were am­bushed in the com­fort of their own home but what fol­lowed was a lot of al­le­ga­tions, spec­u­la­tions and lies, “ one of Mieres’ close as­so­ciate said.

“Why the truth wasn’t re­port­ed? That he kept the peace in the area and pro­tect­ed fish­er­men...he even helped the poor, old peo­ple and sin­gle par­ents and the chil­dren of the vil­lage. No one suf­fered un­der his watch, “ he added.

Oth­er vil­lagers of the small coastal fish­ing vil­lage re­mained qui­et and had noth­ing to say as the fu­ner­al ser­vice pro­gressed.

Mieres, 46, his wife Ali­ta “Let­ty” Dehra, 50, Nigel Oc­tave, and Kadir Joseph, were all gunned down at about 2.45am last Thurs­day at Mieres’ home off Las Cuevas Road, Las Cuevas.

Mieres was among those ar­rest­ed dur­ing the 2011 State of Emer­gency and charged with be­ing a gang leader.

He was lat­er re­leased.

In 2017, Mieres was ar­rest­ed and charged with con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der, against Sel­wyn ‘Robo­cop’ Alex­is.

Mieres was ar­rest­ed then af­ter po­lice ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at his home look­ing for drugs. At the time of his death, Mieres was free on $450,000 bail.