Res­i­dents in the Barataria com­mu­ni­ty, where bank em­ploy­ee Sher­mell Roberts lived, re­mained shocked yes­ter­day by her mur­der as they strug­gled to un­der­stand why she was killed. 

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were al­so stumped, say­ing they were yet to de­ter­mine a mo­tive for the in­ci­dent. 

Roberts, 37, was am­bushed and shot sev­er­al times in her car right in front of her home as she ar­rived from work. 

Roberts was em­ployed as a sup­port of­fi­cer with the First Cit­i­zens Bank, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah branch.

Po­lice said around 4 pm res­i­dents of Kitch­en­er Av­enue heard sev­er­al gun­shots, and on check­ing, they found Roberts cling­ing to life in her red Hon­da Civic mo­tor­car. She was shot in the head and neck. She suc­cumbed to her in­juries at hos­pi­tal.

Yes­ter­day, res­i­dents, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said they were very shocked over the in­ci­dent, as noth­ing like that had ever hap­pened in the area. The res­i­dents did not say much about Roberts, de­scrib­ing her as qui­et in the com­mu­ni­ty. But they called for a height­ened po­lice pres­ence. 

“This is a wake-up call. No one safe and we need the po­lice around on pa­trols,” one res­i­dent said.

When con­tact­ed, of­fi­cials from FCB de­clined to com­ment on Roberts’ mur­der, cit­ing it as a “sen­si­tive mat­ter.”