Gun­men made a bloody start to the week­end, claim­ing five lives in four shoot­ing in­ci­dents over the last 24 hours in Laven­tille, San­ta Cruz, San­gre Grande and St He­le­na. Up to late yes­ter­day, po­lice were still search­ing for sus­pects in con­nec­tion with these mur­ders.

At Pic­ton Ex­ten­sion in San­gre Grande on Fri­day night, gun­men opened fire on a group lim­ing out­side a house. One man was killed and three oth­ers were in­jured.

Po­lice said Ron­del Joseph died yes­ter­day morn­ing while un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery. An­oth­er man, iden­ti­fied as Sayam Thomp­son is in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal, while three oth­ers are ward­ed in se­ri­ous but sta­ble con­di­tion.

Al­so on Fri­day night, two Laven­tille res­i­dents who were shot mul­ti­ple times suc­cumbed to their in­juries at hos­pi­tal.

Nigel “Mokin” Dubar­ry, of Mc Shine Lands, Des­pers Dri­ve, and Stan­field “Ouse” Allers, of Pic­ton Road, were stand­ing near Pepe’s Shop at the cor­ner of Des­pers Dri­ve and Pic­ton Road at around 7.30 pm when they were at­tacked by two gun­men who came out a sil­ver Nis­san Almera and shot them be­fore es­cap­ing in the ve­hi­cle.

Eye­wit­ness­es alert­ed IATF of­fi­cers at the near­by Fort Cha­con base and a team un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Ag Sgt Prim­dass took the vic­tims to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where they were pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said re­venge was the mo­tive in the fa­tal shoot­ing of Jesse Ram­cha­ran, 20, at his home at Ton­cabean Ter­race, Can­taro Vil­lage, San­ta Cruz.

Po­lice of­fi­cers went to the URP work­er’s home at around 2.55 am fol­low­ing re­ports of a shoot­ing and found his body in a room on the west­ern side of the wood­en house. Homi­cide CSI per­son­nel re­cov­ered 17 7.62 spent shell cas­ings, 15 .40 cal­i­bre cas­ings, eight met­al ob­jects and five de­formed pro­jec­tiles at the scene.

Then at around 2 pm yes­ter­day, busi­ness­man Naren­dra Sinanan was wash­ing his car in front of his home at Air­port Boule­vard while speak­ing with his neigh­bour whose two chil­dren were near­by. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, a sil­ver Axio ve­hi­cle stopped near them and two armed men came out.

Sinanan ran in­side his home and the men fol­lowed shoot­ing him sev­er­al times be­fore es­cap­ing. The chil­dren, a sev­en-year-old boy, his eight-year-old sis­ter and their fa­ther, 40, were al­so shot.

All four were tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex where Sinanan suc­cumbed to his in­juries. Po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.