An­na-Lisa Paul

Gun­men stormed a birth­day par­ty in Ari­ma on Mon­day night, fa­tal­ly shoot­ing Can­dace Grif­fith and wound­ing five oth­ers.

Griev­ing rel­a­tives re­mained in shock, blam­ing jeal­ousy and greed for the in­ci­dent.

They de­nied it was a drug-fu­elled war which con­tin­ued to shad­ow a fam­i­ly, of St Rose Street, Ari­ma.

Grif­fith, 41, of Nel­son Street, Ari­ma, was among those who were at­tend­ing the birth­day par­ty at the res­i­dence, when the men en­tered the two-storey struc­ture by climb­ing over the walls at the back, side and front of the prop­er­ty.

Still cov­ered in Grif­fith’s blood as he spoke to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, a male rel­a­tive cried say­ing, “It’s all jeal­ousy, just peo­ple liv­ing a hap­py life and they don’t want that. They say we can’t live like that.”

The hair­dress­er and moth­er of two was present at her cousin’s 37th birth­day par­ty around 10.35 pm, when rapid gun­fire sud­den­ly drowned out the mu­sic and laugh­ter.

As men, women and chil­dren, along with the el­der­ly ran for cov­er, the gun­men con­tin­ued shoot­ing, shat­ter­ing win­dows and bot­tles and pop­ping bal­loons as sev­er­al peo­ple dashed in­side, crouch­ing low be­hind couch­es and un­der the pool ta­ble. Oth­ers flat­tened them­selves against con­crete pil­lars, pray­ing the bul­lets would miss them.

In the af­ter­math of what was 15 min­utes of ter­ror, Grif­fith lay dy­ing in the gate­way.

The in­jured in­clud­ed Lil­ly Layne, 15; Deleon Layne; 16; and Alana Layne, 41—all of Tem­ple Street, Ari­ma; as well as Chad East­man, 38, of Bon Air, Arou­ca; and Nicholas Se­bro, whose age and ad­dress was not re­leased by po­lice up to yes­ter­day.

Po­lice re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent and took the six in­jured to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty where Grif­fith was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival. Lil­ly was treat­ed for gun­shot wounds to the left leg, while Deleon was shot in the right big toe.

Alana was shot in the head, while East­man re­ceived a flesh wound to the right arm. Se­bro was shot in the right ab­domen.

Al­though Deleon and East­man were treat­ed and dis­charged late on Mon­day, Alana, Lil­ly and Se­bro were trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, where Alana re­mained in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion up to yes­ter­day.

The oth­er two were said to be in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

A 69-year-old grand­moth­er, who asked that her name not be pub­lished, was shot in the mouth.

While she de­clined med­ical at­ten­tion on Mon­day night as she feared leav­ing the house, she walked around dazed, her face cov­ered in dried blood and a rough plas­ter cov­er­ing the bul­let wound.

Oth­er res­i­dents on Tem­ple Street re­mained locked in­side yes­ter­day, afraid to ven­ture out.

“It’s jeal­ousy and greed that lead to this, that’s it. The same thing that hap­pened with the Shoppes of Ari­ma a few weeks ago...they re­lat­ed. They don’t want to see any­one hap­py and live their life. That’s the prob­lem in the vil­lage here...just jeal­ousy and hate. It was a birth­day par­ty and watch what hap­pened,” said one man who had been present dur­ing the shoot­ing, said

In that in­ci­dent he spoke of, around mid­day on March 25, gun­men opened fire on Jack Layne, of Ari­ma, as he drove along Tumpuna Road with his wife and three chil­dren in their Kia Soren­to SUV.

The 33-year-old was shot sev­er­al times as he at­tempt­ed to es­cape the four gun­men.

He made a brief ap­pear­ance at Mon­day’s par­ty, but re­port­ed­ly left the lo­ca­tion short­ly be­fore the shoot­ing oc­curred.