PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Mo­ments af­ter meet­ing to dis­cuss fu­ner­al arrange­ments for a friend who re­cent­ly passed away, Neko­ro Si­fontes was mur­dered on Fri­day night.

Short­ly be­fore 10 pm, Si­fontes, 37, al­so known as “Ounce”, met with a group of peo­ple at the cor­ner of Sylvia Hunte and Vic­tor Bruce Phase 4, La Hor­quet­ta. The meet­ing was cen­tred around fu­ner­al plans for a man who had re­cent­ly passed away from can­cer.

When the dis­cus­sion end­ed and the group dis­persed, two gun­men ap­proached Si­fontes, who lived not far away at Der­rick Mur­ray Dri­ve, and opened fire on him. He at­tempt­ed to run away from his at­tack­ers but col­lapsed a short dis­tance away.

The gun­men es­caped in a ve­hi­cle which was parked near­by.

Si­fontes died at the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty. Po­lice be­lieve his death was re­lat­ed to gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

His death was the first of three homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tions in the Ari­ma dis­trict from Fri­day evening in­to the start of Sat­ur­day.

Short­ly af­ter mid­night, of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a sec­ond mur­der.

Around 12.10 am Sat­ur­day, the of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly heard gun­shots and pro­ceed­ed to Train Line Road, Mal­abar. They were in­formed a car crashed in­to the gate of a house in the area af­ter the gun­shots were heard. Res­i­dents re­port­ed­ly found 39-year-old Gabriel Reid slumped be­hind the steer­ing wheel. Reid, of Moo­nan Road, Waller­field, had been shot sev­er­al times but was still alive when of­fi­cers ar­rived. He died at the scene.

Res­i­dents said Reid, who worked as a PH dri­ver in the area, had dropped a pas­sen­ger off at Joseph Av­enue, min­utes be­fore the shots were heard.

Po­lice said they had no mo­tive for Reid’s mur­der.

In the third in­ci­dent, of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to re­ports of gun­shots at Val­ley View #1, Pin­to, Ari­ma.

When they ar­rived, they found 26-year-old Akeem Ralph dead out­side an apart­ment in the area.

Ralph, who was found clad on­ly in his box­ers, had been shot about the body.

Po­lice were told that Ralph was at home with a woman and his two-month-old child when men came knock­ing on the door of his apart­ment around 2 am, call­ing his name.

When Ralph went out to check, he was con­front­ed by men dressed in cam­ou­flage who de­mand­ed to know the where­abouts of a firearm.

Gun­shots were heard short­ly af­ter­wards.

Po­lice have not con­firmed a mo­tive for Ralph’s mur­der.