Four shot, one dead in KP Lands attack

AN­NA LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

&

RALPH BAN­WARIE

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

A 39-year-old man was shot dead, and three oth­ers were left in­jured dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing at­tack in KP Lands, Va­len­cia, just hours af­ter four men were wound­ed in a sep­a­rate shoot­ing in San­gre Grande.

The dead man was iden­ti­fied as Kelvin “Ba­lo” Paul of Va­len­cia. Po­lice said he and the oth­er vic­tims—aged 19, 18 and 25—were lim­ing out­side a shop along La Plat­ta Cir­cu­lar around 12.15 am on Sat­ur­day when two gun­men opened fire.

A to­tal of 35 spent 5.56 mm shell cas­ings were found at the scene. In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve Paul was chased and shot sev­er­al more times be­fore his at­tack­ers es­caped.

The 19-year-old, a rel­a­tive of the de­ceased, was shot in the legs and but­tocks and re­mains in sta­ble con­di­tion. The 18-year-old sus­tained mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds and was list­ed in crit­i­cal con­di­tion up to yes­ter­day. The 25-year-old was treat­ed and dis­charged for fa­cial in­juries.

The group had re­port­ed­ly been drink­ing Pun­cheon Rum out­side the shop be­fore the at­tack.

Paul’s com­mon-law wife, Ma­ri­na Phells, de­scribed the mo­ment she re­alised some­thing was wrong.

"So, with­in the sleep and the wake, I just hear the shot, ba-da-da-da. So, I go up on them and I watch my phone and I see that it's af­ter twelve. And I see them all run out­side and I see a set of peo­ple down there by the shop.

I see him body down there. Next thing I see, all of the boys run­ning up and say, Ba­lo dead, Ba­lo dead. And I find like me and see him.

So, I put on my phone and I walk down be­cause it was dark. And when I put on my phone light and I reach down there, he in the drain. With his mouth open, his eyes open and his hand, his hand grips, his foot break off."

He was pro­nounced dead at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal at 12.46 am.

East­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers said there is no ev­i­dence so far that this at­tack is con­nect­ed to Fri­day night's shoot­ing in San­gre Grande, which al­so left four men hos­pi­talised.

A se­nior of­fi­cer said in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to both in­ci­dents are be­ing han­dled sep­a­rate­ly.

Po­lice have since in­creased pa­trols and de­ployed tac­ti­cal sup­port across high-risk ar­eas in the re­gion. Foren­sic teams are analysing ev­i­dence and fol­low-up in­ter­views are on­go­ing.

“While no sus­pects have been ap­pre­hend­ed in con­nec­tion with ei­ther in­ci­dent, leads are be­ing ac­tive­ly pur­sued,” the of­fi­cial said.

The TTPS is urg­ing any­one with in­for­ma­tion to con­tact San­gre Grande CID, Va­len­cia Po­lice Post, or Crime Stop­pers at 800-TIPS.