Po­lice of­fi­cers were kept busy yes­ter­day, as three men were shot dead and two oth­ers in­jured in four sep­a­rate in­ci­dents.

In the lat­est in­ci­dent, po­lice launched a man­hunt in the Plan­nings in east Port-of-Spain for sus­pects af­ter a shoot­ing in­ci­dent left Bran­don San­ti­a­go, of Rose­hill, East Dry Riv­er, dead.

Po­lice said at about 2.15 pm yes­ter­day, per­son­nel from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Task Force, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Sgt Alexan­der, re­spond­ed to a re­port of a man be­ing shot at Low­er Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain. On ar­rival, they found San­ti­a­go suf­fer­ing from gun­shot wounds to his body.

PC Nunes and a par­ty of of­fi­cers from the PoSTF took the vic­tim to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for med­ical at­ten­tion.

While at the hos­pi­tal, of­fi­cers re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that one of the sus­pects was seen run­ning in­to the Plan­nings area on Dun­can Street. A search was sub­se­quent­ly con­duct­ed in the area but no ar­rests were made.

Po­lice said San­ti­a­go suc­cumbed to his in­juries lat­er on at the hos­pi­tal.

Hours ear­li­er, Kelvin Gor­don, 40, of Tor­recil­la Gar­dens, Ari­ma, was shot dead in the Heights of Aripo. Gor­don op­er­at­ed a grav­el pit at the cor­ner of the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way and An­tigua Road.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 10.15 am, a par­ty of of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing Sgt Leopold, PC Samar­roo, in com­pa­ny with PC Brew­ster and PC Carter, were on mo­bile pa­trol when they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion of gun­shots be­ing heard at the Heights of Aripo. They re­spond­ed and sub­se­quent­ly found Gor­don ly­ing dead at the side of the road­way with gun­shot wounds. He was lat­er iden­ti­fied by rel­a­tives.

Pri­or to this in­ci­dent, at 8.20 am, Kevon “Boyo” Mark was stand­ing near the Thomasville One-Stop shop at Ja­cob Hill, Waller­field, when a sil­ver AD wag­on pulled up and its oc­cu­pants fired sev­er­al shots at him.

Res­i­dents lat­er found Mark in front of the gate­way en­trance to the shop with sev­er­al gun­shot wounds about his body.

A par­ty of of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing Ag ASP Cog­gins, In­sp Ablacks­ingh, In­sp Green, Cpl Rahim, PC France, PC Desuze and PC Fran­cis of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion 2; Sup­port Unit First Re­spon­ders Ag CPL Sookram, PC Alex­is of the NDTF East, crime scene of­fi­cers and WPC Sam-Gooray, PC Guer­ra and PC Ig­nas­sio, vis­it­ed the scene.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.

Mean­while, in an in­ci­dent on Mon­day, two friends were shot and wound­ed in Va­len­cia.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, the men, ages 31 and 33, were lim­ing along the Va­len­cia Old Road when they were ap­proached by two masked men. The masked men re­port­ed­ly had a brief con­ver­sa­tion with the two friends, then pulled out guns and shot at them. The armed men then es­caped.

The vic­tims sus­tained gun­shot wounds to their up­per bod­ies and were tak­en to the hos­pi­tal where they were treat­ed. Po­lice said both their con­di­tions are se­ri­ous but not life-threat­en­ing. A team of of­fi­cers from the East­ern Di­vi­sion re­spond­ed and re­cov­ered 11 spent shells at the scene.