Af­ter the mur­der of 29-year-old Nicholas Mor­gan, one of his neigh­bours is ap­peal­ing to peo­ple to turn away from a life of crime.

The 30-year-old woman, who ad­mit­ted to hav­ing a crim­i­nal past, warned that vi­o­lence and crime would lead them down a path to death or prison. She spoke with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, af­ter Mor­gan was shot dead at Rochard Road in Pe­nal on Wednes­day night.

Po­lice said short­ly af­ter 10 pm, the se­cu­ri­ty guard was at the back of the fam­i­ly house, where he of­ten stayed, about to take a bath when a gun­man ap­proached. He tried to flee to safe­ty but was shot mul­ti­ple times. He col­lapsed and died at the scene.

Res­i­dents told po­lice they saw a man stand­ing over Mor­gan’s body with a flash­light or a phone light af­ter hear­ing about 12 gun­shots.

Po­lice re­cov­ered sev­en spent 9 mm shell cas­ings.

While the po­lice had no mo­tive for his killing, Mor­gan’s neigh­bour claimed he went astray and that may have cost him his life.

The woman re­called that five years ago, she was shot in her arm and chest in a bar, and had served a prison term for firearms and am­mu­ni­tion. She said she knew first­hand the ef­fects of a life of crime.

“And for me, to the youths, gun vi­o­lence and vi­o­lence on the whole don’t make no sense. It will lead you, is ei­ther you reach in the jail, that is if you lucky, and if you not lucky is six feet or 12 feet un­der. So vi­o­lence, it don’t make no sense.”

Lament­ing that crime had seem­ing­ly be­come the norm for some, she said, “As a vic­tim and some­body who come from pover­ty, I could un­der­stand you want mon­ey but it have peo­ple to as­sist you to go about the right way of do­ing things to get mon­ey.”

She al­so said she did not think the State of Emer­gency would put a dent in crime.

“Crime can’t done. Peo­ple keep watch­ing the lit­tle ones and feel­ing that is the lit­tle ones do­ing the crime but yeah them do­ing the crimes but is the big ones con­trol­ling the lit­tle ones to do the crimes some­times,” she said.

Re­gion 3 Homi­cide de­tec­tives are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.