A man who po­lice de­scribed as a “pro­fes­sion­al gam­bler” was mur­dered mo­ments af­ter leav­ing a casi­no­—the Princess Mem­bers Club— at East Gates Mall, Trinci­ty.

Po­lice said Der­rick Patrick Jr, 37, of Har­ri­nanan Ex­ten­sion, Mal­abar, was about to en­ter his black Toy­ota Corol­la at 11 pm when a gun­man came out of a car parked next to his and shot him. The killer then jumped back in­to a black Hyundai-mod­el ve­hi­cle and drove off. The cars, at the time of the killing, were parked in the mall’s base­ment carpark.

At East Gates Mall yes­ter­day, the en­trance to the base­ment carpark was closed.

Work­ers at the casi­no said Patrick had mo­ments ear­li­er played Rhum 23, a casi­no ta­ble game, but did not win. The work­ers said he was a fre­quent pa­tron.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the man­age­ment at East Gates Mall said it was work­ing close­ly with po­lice to en­sure the mall is safe fol­low­ing the shoot­ing death at its carpark. The man­age­ment said it was com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a safe and se­cure shop­ping ex­pe­ri­ence.

“We have a high­ly skilled and ex­pe­ri­enced se­cu­ri­ty team that utilis­es a num­ber of proac­tive se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, both seen and un­seen. We al­so main­tain a close work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the po­lice to en­sure that the ap­pro­pri­ate se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures are be­ing tak­en to help pro­vide and main­tain a safe en­vi­ron­ment at our prop­er­ty.”

Man­age­ment al­so of­fered con­do­lences to the rel­a­tives of Patrick Jr.

Po­lice of­fi­cers were seen at the mall speak­ing with a man­age­ment team at 11.55 am.

One of the of­fi­cers was over­heard in­sist­ing that the of­fi­cers re­ceive all in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing footage of the shoot­ing, as soon as pos­si­ble.

The of­fi­cers left around noon and two of them were seen in­ter­ro­gat­ing a man, who lat­er ac­cused the of­fi­cers of “jum­by­ing him.”

In­side the mall, ten­ants and shop­pers were undis­turbed by Patrick’s killing as they went about their busi­ness as usu­al.

One shop­per told Guardian Me­dia he was un­aware of the killing but was not fear­ful. Se­cu­ri­ty guards ap­peared to be on high alert, scru­ti­n­is­ing each cus­tomer en­ter­ing.

Busi­ness own­ers said they did not ex­pect the mur­der to ham­per sales.

At Patrick’s fa­ther’s Red Hill, D’Abadie home, a rel­a­tive said the se­nior Patrick was not at home and there was no oth­er rel­a­tive who could speak to the me­dia about the de­ceased.

Patrick’s mur­der fol­lows that of Kevon Solomon, who was al­so killed at the near­by Trinci­ty Mall. Po­lice re­port­ed in June last year that Solomon, a so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ty known as “Yank Boss,” was dri­ving his Chevy Cruze in the Trinci­ty Mall carpark when he was at­tacked by a gun­man who shot at his car. Solomon was hit sev­er­al times and crashed in­to a park­ing bar­ri­er and an­oth­er ve­hi­cle and sub­se­quent­ly died.

Ear­li­er this year, busi­ness­man Michael St John was al­so shot mul­ti­ple times as he made his way to his parked ve­hi­cle at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, St James. St John, own­er of the D’Di­al Fit­ness Gym, was shot in the face by a gun­man in Jan­u­ary. He sur­vived the at­tack.

On­ly on Thurs­day, DCP Ju­nior Ben­jamin said po­lice would in­crease pa­trols out­side banks, at hos­pi­tals and oth­er spaces fre­quent­ed by mem­bers of the pub­lic, giv­en the num­ber of brazen killings which oc­curred in high­ly pop­u­lat­ed places.