It was the talk of the coun­try this past week: The video which Crime Watch host Ian Al­leyne high­light­ed of the ex­e­cu­tion of 45-year-old busi­ness­man Dar­ren Shane Painter out­side his South­ern Main Road, Cunu­pia, busi­ness place.Painter, of Ra­goo­nanan Road, Cunu­pia, was the own­er of a cel­lu­lar and ac­ces­sories busi­ness and an au­to rental busi­ness.

He was shot ex­e­cu­tion-style by a man dressed in a jeans and a pink shirt last week. Eye­wit­ness­es say the man laughed as he shot Painter, who had just walked back in­to the yard of his busi­ness place, where two women were sell­ing gifts for Valen­tine's Day.Painter may have seen the man as he crossed the street, but he paid lit­tle at­ten­tion as he walked back on­to the com­pound drink­ing from a sty­ro­foam cup. He walked in­to the gate and the shoot­er calm­ly walked up be­hind him and shot him once in the head.

But his shoot­er want­ed to en­sure that he was dead, as he emp­tied the bul­lets from the gun in­to his vic­tim while his ac­com­plice(s) wait­ed for him in a White B13. He then pulled out an­oth­er gun and emp­tied it in­to his vic­tim.Traf­fic flowed freely along the road even as the crime was be­ing com­mit­ted, dri­vers seem­ing­ly obliv­i­ous to what was hap­pen­ing.

One of the two women sell­ing Valen­tine's Day gifts ran af­ter the first shot was fired and Painter fell, while the oth­er looked on in dis­be­lief, then al­so ran for safe­ty. The gun­man took no no­tice of them. Hav­ing killed Painter he calm­ly jumped in­to the wait­ing car and left the scene.But with­in min­utes of the crime po­lice were tail­ing the men. Al­leyne was on the scene show­ing view­ers the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion po­lice chas­ing the killers on the Solomon Ho­choy High­way as a he­li­copter cir­cled the sky.

Soon enough the po­lice got the bet­ter of the ban­dits. Two of the men, in­clud­ing Painter's shoot­er, were shot and killed and a third was tak­en in­to cus­tody.Po­lice would lat­er tell Al­leyne that Painter's shoot­er had been iden­ti­fied as An­der­son "Chucky" Deo, the man want­ed in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of a sol­dier and an­oth­er man at a bar in Preysal, Cou­va. The oth­er man killed was iden­ti­fied as Ju­nior Noel.The lone sur­vivor re­mains in po­lice cus­tody.

On Thurs­day, as­sis­tant act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent John­ny Abra­ham told Crime Watch the man had not been charged as yet be­cause in­ves­ti­ga­tors were do­ing checks on his back­ground, and record­ing state­ments. He said it was more than like­ly that the man would be charged as an ac­com­plice to mur­der.The air­ing of the footage gen­er­at­ed live­ly dis­cus­sion as callers to Crime Watch spoke about the brazen face of crime.

Al­leyne told view­ers that fol­low­ing his own in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he found out that Painter had him­self been in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and while he did not go in­to de­tail, as­sis­tant Supt Abra­ham had told him Painter was one of six men charged for the 2008 kid­nap­ping of Ronald and Richard Nath, the own­ers of Nath's fur­ni­ture store in San­gre Grande.The mat­ter is still be­fore the High Court.