Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The shoot­ing that led to the mur­ders of four men in Bel­mont on Sun­day night is be­lieved to be part of on­go­ing gang war­fare be­tween ri­val fac­tions in Bel­mont and St Paul Street, po­lice say.

The four men, Bran­don Forde, 23, Bri­an Pad­more, 26, Chivon Clarke, 27, and Ker­ron Moore, 30, were at the cor­ner of Smart Place and Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road af­ter 10 pm when a dark SUV drove up to them.

Five gun­men got out the SUV and shot the men be­fore get­ting back in the ve­hi­cle and es­cap­ing.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors yes­ter­day said thus far, no one has been ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the mur­ders, but they were pur­su­ing sev­er­al an­gles in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

An of­fi­cer said one an­gle was the pos­si­bil­i­ty of war­fare be­tween gangs. The of­fi­cer said on­ly one of the men in the group may have been the in­tend­ed tar­get of the killers, with the re­main­ing three vic­tims be­ing “col­lat­er­al dam­age.”

Po­lice said se­cu­ri­ty cam­era footage was be­ing viewed but not­ed “it was not help­ful”, as the killers all wore masks.

One of­fi­cer said the ve­hi­cle used in the at­tack is be­lieved to have been stolen and po­lice were work­ing to lo­cate where and when it was tak­en.

“It’s dif­fi­cult be­cause most of the time we’ve no­ticed that the peo­ple who steal the ve­hi­cles are not the same ones who do the shoot­ings and the mur­ders. In­stead, what they do is they pass it on to the killers who go and do what they do,” the of­fi­cer said.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they were await­ing fur­ther in­tel­li­gence from oth­er TTPS arms as part of their en­quiries.

Mean­while, re­gard­ing the Lala­ja, Ari­ma triple mur­der on Mon­day, a se­nior of­fi­cer said on­ly one of the three vic­tims is be­lieved to have been the in­tend­ed tar­get of the killers.

On Mon­day af­ter­noon, Ari­ma po­lice were called to a forest­ed area a few kilo­me­tres north of Lala­ja Junc­tion, af­ter the bod­ies of An­drew Rose, 57, Troy Mar­celle Cal­don, 46, and Lance Hill, 30, were found in a car. Po­lice found 25 spent 9mm shells at the scene.

Sources said while they could not dis­close which of the men may have been the in­tend­ed tar­get, one of them was a “per­son of in­ter­est” in sev­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions. How­ev­er, they stopped short of re­leas­ing a name.

No one had been ar­rest­ed as of yes­ter­day. Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion II are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries in­to the Lala­ja triple mur­der while the Re­gion I Bu­reau of­fi­cers are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the Bel­mont quadru­ple mur­der.