A 21-year-old man, Cain Demetree Thomas, was found shot dead in the early hours of Thursday morning on Seven Mile Beach between White Sands condos and the Sundowner villa. This is the second shooting murder this week, after a former prison guard, Harry Wenworth Elliott, was shot on Monday. The RCIPS are appealing for witnesses to the murder.
“This is becoming an intolerable situation with people being shot and murdered,” Police Commissioner Derek Byrne said in a press conference held to inform the public of this horrific event.
The Commissioner said the RCIPS believed that the victim and the perpetrators were known to each other, in fact, well-known to each other, he said, adding the police believed the meeting had been pre-arranged.
The victim knew the two men he was meeting and was then shot “multiple times”, he advised, at least twice in the head and possibly up to six times.
The victim was the key witness in two key trials.
The Commissioner said the current spate of serious violent crime was being committed by a small group of individuals who had been identified by the police. And while the police were appealing for witnesses, they also advised that if members of the public were to come forward with information, they would be safe so long as they followed police advice and did what they told them.
There were additional patrols from the firearms response unit that were out in the police’s crime task force unit who were actively seeking these people. As a result, one person had been arrested on Wednesday in connection with Monday’s murder, and the police were actively seeking other members of the group, the Commissioner stated.
When asked why the police did not go and arrest the suspects, the Commissioner said if he could locate them he would arrest them.
“There are firearms in the community, there is information in the community. I and my colleagues understand about the concerns people have about becoming involved and providing information. We will do what needs to be done to protect witnesses that come forward, that’s an assurance,” the Commissioner said. That needed to be done before more people got hurt, he said.
The Commissioner said the RCIPS was very open to using a reward system to encourage information from the public to become forthcoming
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