Shane Su­perville 

A 54-year-old po­lice­man was one of two peo­ple killed in two sep­a­rate mur­ders, hours apart in Ari­ma on Sat­ur­day night.

Po­lice said Shel­don Pe­ter­son, was sit­ting out­side the Awe­some Food and Drink Su­per­mar­ket with two oth­er men at the cor­ner of East­ern Main Road and Olton Road at around 7.30 pm when a beige Nis­san Almera drove in­to the park­ing lot.

Masked gun­men got out of the car and con­front­ed Pe­ter­son, who re­port­ed­ly strug­gled with one of his at­tack­ers. Pe­ter­son was able to pull out his li­censed pis­tol and fire a shot, but was gunned down by the ban­dits who took his gun.

The killers got back in the car and es­caped. Two by­standers sus­tained in­juries to their left an­kles and shins from the shoot­ing. Of­fi­cers of the Ari­ma Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit vis­it­ed the scene and found six 9 mm spent shells of var­i­ous mod­els.

In the sec­ond in­ci­dent, po­lice said 21-year-old Nicholai Jack was lim­ing with a group of peo­ple in an open yard at Cleaver Heights, Ari­ma, when a white car drove near­by. By­standers re­port­ed see­ing a gun­man get out of the car and shoot at the peo­ple gath­ered.

Jack was hit sev­er­al times in the mid­sec­tion as the at­tack­er got back in the car which sped off. Passers-by took Jack to the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal where he was de­clared dead at 10.15 pm.

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion II are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries in­to both in­ci­dents.