Derek Achong

A 33-year-old gang leader from East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain, was shot dead near a con­struc­tion site in the cap­i­tal on Mon­day. Around 9.35 pm, David "Jah David" An­drews, of Harpe Place, East Dry Riv­er, was stand­ing out­side the site at the cor­ner of New and Char­lotte Streets, Port-of-Spain.Po­lice said two gun­men ap­proached and shot him more than 20 times be­fore run­ning away.

Po­lice ar­rived with­in min­utes and took An­drews to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, across the street from where he was shot. He died of his in­juries while un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery.Homi­cide de­tec­tives said An­drews was the leader of the G Unit gang, which op­er­ates in East Dry Riv­er, with off­shoots op­er­at­ing in oth­er parts of the coun­try, in­clud­ing En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas.Mem­bers of the gang iden­ti­fy them­selves with tat­toos of the gang's name and mark­ings on their backs or ab­domens, po­lice said.

Po­lice sources said An­drews re­placed for­mer gang leader Ker­win "Fresh" Phillip, who was shot dead at the cor­ner of Ox­ford and Hen­ry Streets, Port-of-Spain, af­ter go­ing to a par­ty on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2007."In their hey­day, they were one of the most feared gangs in east Port-of-Spain. Af­ter Fresh get kill, Jah David was try­ing to keep things qui­et to avoid po­lice at­ten­tion," a se­nior homi­cide de­tec­tive said.

Po­lice sources said the strength of the in­fa­mous crim­i­nal syn­di­cate di­min­ished af­ter Phillip's death and the mur­ders of sev­er­al key mem­bers which fol­lowed. "I am sur­prised he last­ed so long. He was al­ways marked for death," the de­tec­tive said.In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they were brac­ing for reprisal killings last night, as An­drews was a well-liked mem­ber of his com­mu­ni­ty. His mur­der has been clas­si­fied as gang-re­lat­ed.

Mean­while, in an un­re­lat­ed case, the head­less body of a man was dis­cov­ered by po­lice in Ca­roni yes­ter­day. The body was found around 3 pm in a co­conut plan­ta­tion off the Ca­roni North Bank Road in Kel­ly Vil­lage by po­lice who re­spond­ed to an anony­mous tip-off. The vic­tim re­mained uniden­ti­fied up to late yes­ter­day evening.