An act of dead­ly gun vi­o­lence has shat­tered the peace in Moru­ga, claim­ing the lives of two young cousins and leav­ing two moth­ers griev­ing loss­es they hoped would nev­er come.

Josi­ah Carthy, 19, of White Trace and his cousin Seon Carthy of Si­mon Trace were found shot to death along a forest­ed part of Si­mon Trace in St Mary’s Vil­lage yes­ter­day morn­ing, hours af­ter they left home with­out say­ing where they were go­ing.

For Josi­ah’s moth­er, Cass­ian Rivers, the pain is now deeply per­son­al.

“It reached my doorsteps now. Every day I am watch­ing Face­book see­ing these things, and now my son on the news. I don’t know what to say. It is out of hand,” Rivers told re­porters at her home.

A farmer dis­cov­ered the cousins’ bod­ies around 7.30 am yes­ter­day. Po­lice said a gold-coloured Nis­san Almera was parked in the mid­dle of the road­way, win­dows down and keys in the ig­ni­tion. Rough­ly 200 me­tres away, Seon was found with a gun­shot wound to the head, while Josi­ah was ly­ing in a grassy area near­by with gun­shot wounds to his back.

Of­fi­cers from the St Mary’s Po­lice Sta­tion se­cured the scene and called in a team from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions: Re­gion Three, in­clud­ing Supt Per­sad, ASP Ram­lo­gan and Sgt Bridge­mo­han.

Rel­a­tives de­scribed Josi­ah as a qui­et, friend­ly bar­ber who worked in Princes Town. His moth­er said he learnt the trade by cut­ting his broth­er’s hair, even­tu­al­ly sav­ing up to buy his own equip­ment. Just three weeks ago, he pur­chased a car to get to work more eas­i­ly.

Rivers said she last saw the cousins on Sun­day evening at her home.

“They didn’t tell me where they were go­ing. They just left. I found out they were at a bar around 7.30 pm, but af­ter that, noth­ing.”

Josi­ah’s girl­friend tried call­ing him sev­er­al times that night, but the phone rang and went to voice­mail.

Vil­lagers re­port­ed hear­ing gun­shots around 8 pm on Sun­day.

By 8 am yes­ter­day, Josi­ah’s grand­moth­er was told that a farmer had found two bod­ies.

Rivers said the two had no rea­son to be there as the road is bad, there are no street­lights, and it’s past the last house.

She re­called that Seon re­cent­ly had an al­ter­ca­tion with a res­i­dent in the area.

“He said bot­tles were thrown and one hit some­one’s win­dow. He said he would pay for the lou­vre, but he com­plained about a par­tic­u­lar per­son up here.”

A rel­a­tive said Seon pre­vi­ous­ly had a falling out with the same man.

Rivers sus­pects the man lured Seon to the iso­lat­ed road and mur­dered him and Josi­ah.

“Seon wasn’t a trou­ble­mak­er. He was a peo­ple per­son. But I be­lieve my son was mur­dered be­cause he was there when it hap­pened.”