Cops probe multiple motives in Guerra’s murder

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Po­lice of­fi­cers in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mur­der of San­gre Grande busi­ness­man and re­put­ed crime fig­ure Dan­ny Guer­ra say there is no clear mo­tive, just yet, for the killing. How­ev­er, they say they are work­ing on mul­ti­ple an­gles on what may have prompt­ed the dead­ly at­tack.

Guer­ra, 49, was gunned down while sit­ting in his black Toy­ota Hilux, out­side his Guy Trace, North Oropouche Road, San­gre Grande of­fice around 5.30 pm on Fri­day.

Se­cu­ri­ty cam­era footage of the at­tack, which was shared on so­cial me­dia, showed a white Nis­san Ti­i­da dri­ving in­to the park­ing space next to Guer­ra’s ve­hi­cle as two masked gun­men got out and shot him sev­er­al times.

The killers were seen get­ting back in the ve­hi­cle and dri­ving off.

Po­lice said Guer­ra was tak­en to the San­gre Grande Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal by a passer­by but was de­clared dead short­ly af­ter.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors found a quan­ti­ty of spent pis­tol cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion at the scene.

Of­fi­cers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force found a white Nis­san Ti­i­da be­lieved to be the get­away ve­hi­cle used by the gun­men on Riv­er Road, off the To­co Main Road, on Fri­day night.

The car was towed to the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit (SERU) at Camp Cu­mu­to for fur­ther analy­sis.

As of yes­ter­day evening, no one had been ar­rest­ed for the mur­der.

One po­lice source said that the en­quiry was still in “its in­fan­cy,” as ev­i­dence was still be­ing gath­ered and in­for­ma­tion be­ing ver­i­fied to form the ba­sis of the en­quiry in­to the mur­der.

An of­fi­cer said po­lice were at this time con­sid­er­ing at least three dif­fer­ent pos­si­ble mo­tives for Guer­ra’s mur­der.

He stressed, how­ev­er, that there was no cred­i­ble ev­i­dence avail­able thus far for in­ves­ti­ga­tors to “com­mit them­selves” to a sin­gle the­o­ry.

But while homi­cide de­tec­tives work to­wards find­ing the rea­son for Guer­ra’s mur­der, one of­fi­cer in the East­ern Di­vi­sion ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of rob­bery as a mo­tive, not­ing that noth­ing was miss­ing from his ve­hi­cle.

The of­fi­cer added that “cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence” re­ceived sug­gest­ed that the killers were not na­tive to San­gre Grande and ar­rived in the area specif­i­cal­ly for the hit be­fore flee­ing.

“No­body from with­in San­gre Grande and en­vi­rons could have gone and did that with­out con­se­quences,” the of­fi­cer said.

Oth­er po­lice sources said that a large team of of­fi­cers had been as­sem­bled to probe Guer­ra’s mur­der. The source said in ad­di­tion to the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Branch and the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) were called in to as­sist with the en­quiry.

One of­fi­cer said that there was em­pha­sis from se­nior of­fi­cers to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent and bring the mat­ter to a con­clu­sion, as re­sources were be­ing mo­bilised with­in hours of the mur­der.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing the launch of a hair styling course at his El Do­ra­do Road con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der dis­missed spec­u­la­tion over Guer­ra’s mur­der, not­ing that base­less the­o­ries from the pub­lic would ul­ti­mate­ly do more harm than good in the wider po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“A lot of con­ver­sa­tion is tak­ing place in the pub­lic do­main, but com­ing from a polic­ing back­ground, spec­u­la­tion doesn’t help an in­ves­ti­ga­tion; ev­i­dence helps an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“So in­ves­ti­ga­tion and ev­i­dence will help this in­ves­ti­ga­tion... not talk, so any­one can say what they want.”

Alexan­der said the loss of life was a con­cern for him as he urged any­one with in­for­ma­tion on Guer­ra’s mur­der to come for­ward and share what they knew with homi­cide de­tec­tives.

Ear­li­er this month, it was re­port­ed that US au­thor­i­ties pro­vid­ed a list of names to the Gov­ern­ment about in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in drug traf­fick­ing lo­cal­ly.

When asked if Guer­ra’s name was on that list, Alexan­der would on­ly say, “What I can tell you is that to­day is a good day. That’s all I can say about that.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and DCP in charge of In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Natasha George, for com­ment on the mur­der were un­suc­cess­ful.