One of the main sus­pects held in con­nec­tion with this morn­ing's quadru­ple mur­der in Las Cuevas of re­put­ed drug and gun smug­gler, Vaughn 'Sand­man' Mieres, his wife, Ali­ka "Let­ty" De­here and two oth­ers, has been iden­ti­fied as one of Mieres' key as­so­ciates.

Po­lice said they shot and wound­ed the sus­pect dur­ing a chase and he is cur­rent­ly at a med­ical in­sti­tu­tion un­der heavy po­lice guard.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the killers car­ried out well-or­ches­trat­ed plan as they drove in­to the area in a Hyundai Tuc­son and AD Wag­on which they burnt be­fore they es­caped by sea in a wait­ing pirogue. The dead­ly at­tacks were car­ried out with high-pow­ered as­sault ri­fles short­ly af­ter 4 am.

Of­fi­cers from sev­er­al units, in­clud­ing Homi­cide and Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tions, are cur­rent­ly pro­cess­ing the scene. The en­tire area had been cor­doned off. He­li­copters from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) are do­ing aer­i­al search­es and coast guard ves­sels are pa­trolling the wa­ters near the crime scene, Mieres' a split lev­el house on a hill over­look­ing the sea.

A re­lease from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) a short time ago con­firmed that "at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.45 am, there was a shoot­ing in­ci­dent at the home of Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres in Las Cuevas,North Coast Trinidad."

The re­lease con­tin­ued: "As a re­sult, the fol­low­ing per­sons were fa­tal­ly shot; Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres, his wife Lite Mieres, Nigel “Blood” Oc­tim and a fourth uniden­ti­fied man. Po­lice are cur­rent­ly ques­tion­ing a per­son of in­ter­est as in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing."

This morn­ing's mur­ders are be­lieved to be linked to an in­ci­dent on June 12 on Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road near Prov­i­dence Girls' Catholic School, when there was an at­tempt on the lives of two of Mieres' chil­dren, aged six and 15, who were treat­ed for in­ju­ries and men­tal trau­ma, along with an 18-year-old stu­dent who was shot in the leg.

The dri­ver of the van trans­port­ing the chil­dren, James Gor­don, of Mara­cas, was al­so shot but man­aged es­cape on foot.

Po­lice said they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that Mieres had found out who was the mas­ter­mind and the hench­men in­volved in that at­tack and was plan­ning "dead­ly re­venge".

At the time of his death, Mieres was out on bail for a se­ries of of­fences. In Sep­tem­ber 2017, he was charged with con­spir­a­cy to mur­der Sel­wyn ‘Robo­cop’ Alex­is on Oc­to­ber 2014.

Alex­is, leader of an En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas gang, was mur­dered on Ju­ly 17, 2016.

Mieres, 44, ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Nanette Forde-John, in the Port of Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, and was grant­ed $450,000 bail.

Mieres was al­so ar­rest­ed af­ter po­lice ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at his home for dan­ger­ous drugs in Au­gust 2017. Dur­ing the search po­lice al­leged­ly seized US$5,330 and TT$1,100 in cash, along with sev­er­al pieces of cam­ou­flage cloth­ing.

Mieres was among sus­pect­ed gang lead­ers ar­rest­ed and charged dur­ing the 2011 State of Emer­gency.