Hours af­ter Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher as­sured the coun­try that the po­lice were in con­trol and man­ag­ing the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion, two men were mur­dered in sep­a­rate shoot­ings.

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 11.25 pm Thurs­day, a gun­man ran up to lo­cal rap artiste Ronald “VMax” Ve­rasamy and shot him while he sat in his car.

Ve­rasamy, 32, of Sinanan Gar­dens, San­ta Cruz, was vis­it­ing some­one at Sec­ond Av­enue, Mt Lam­bert, and seat­ed in his car, which was switched off, when he was killed.

Po­lice be­lieve the killing may be the re­sult of a rob­bery.

About three hours ear­li­er, res­i­dents of S’eat Deau Road, Mar­aval, heard gun­shots and lat­er found Nigel “Jel­lo” Cyprus dead.

Speak­ing at the po­lice week­ly me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said mur­ders are fu­elling fear and anx­i­ety in the coun­try and as­sured that the po­lice were work­ing to ad­dress that.

“We want to as­sure the pub­lic that the po­lice, we are in con­trol and we are able to con­trol the in­crease in vi­o­lent crime. We have not­ed that the firearms con­tin­ue to be the weapon of choice. Our prob­lem is caused by the preva­lence of drugs, guns and gangs. For this year al­ready, we have re­cov­ered 117 weapons. Over the past four years, we would have re­cov­ered 2,840 firearms with 84,373 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion. For the end so far, we have re­cov­ered 1,430 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion,” she said.

The two killings took the mur­der count to 126 for the year, six less than last year at this time.