Two Bagatelle men murdered at garage, shot multiple times

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

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Res­i­dents of the Sea Trace, Bagatelle, Diego Mar­tin com­mu­ni­ty—wept open­ly yes­ter­day as they mourned the mur­ders of two men on Fri­day night dur­ing a dri­ve-by shoot­ing, which has left them shak­en and scared.

Weep­ing as he begged for an­swers, one man de­scribed Chris­t­ian Achille and Mar­cus Best as “good sol­diers.”

Achille, 53, of Tex­eira Street, Diego Mar­tin, was a fa­ther of eight and had been em­ployed as a dri­ver with the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Best, 31, of Ci­ca­da Dri­ve, Riv­er Es­tate, Diego Mar­tin, was a fa­ther of two, who worked as a Car Wash At­ten­dant and some­times dee­jayed at com­mu­ni­ty events.

The two long-time friends al­so worked at Dip­stick’s En­ter­prise Au­to Body Works Shop, which is where the shoot­ing oc­curred.

Po­lice said the two were among a group of men who had been seat­ed in the yard of the garage, en­joy­ing the usu­al af­ter-work lime when around 9 pm a car drove up and stopped in front of the open gate­way.

As those present saw two gun­men emerg­ing from the sil­ver Nis­san Ti­i­da, they raised an alarm, and the group scam­pered.

How­ev­er, Achille and Best were shot mul­ti­ple times as they sought safe­ty and fell to the ground.

The gun­men al­so shot up sev­er­al parked cars in the garage be­fore they got in­to their ve­hi­cle and sped off.

The sus­pect’s get­away car was found aban­doned at Fort George, St James, yes­ter­day morn­ing, with eight spent shell cas­ings in­side.

Res­i­dents yes­ter­day said of­fi­cers re­port­ed that Achille had been shot 29 times and Best at least three times. Res­i­dents al­so claimed foren­sic per­son­nel re­cov­ered 62 spent shell cas­ings at the scene.

While po­lice were work­ing on the the­o­ry that the shoot­ings may be gang-re­lat­ed, res­i­dents in­sist­ed the men were nev­er in­volved in any­thing il­le­gal.

One man, who said he was known to the po­lice, be­came emo­tion­al as he said, “They don’t be on no­body. Them is nor­mal men.”

Of Best, he said, “He was al­ways fo­cused on mak­ing a dol­lar to see bout his chil­dren. He would do what he had­da do and just be about he busi­ness.”

Achille’s rel­a­tive, who did not want to be named, said he was ac­cus­tomed to lim­ing by the garage, and it was not un­usu­al for him to leave his home to go and hang out with his friends.

“He not in noth­ing,” he added, “He is a very hard-work­ing man. Every­body could tell you that.”

“He does just work and go home nor­mal.”

He spec­u­lat­ed that Achille, “Had sim­ply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Re­gard­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion, he said, “We have to cov­er our­selves, giv­en the times we’re liv­ing in right now.”

“Pray be­fore you go out. If you head­ing up the road and get a bad feel­ing...say the Our Fa­ther prayer and ba­si­cal­ly cov­er your­self. Is just to live with love and be cau­tious out there. Know where you go­ing and be aware of your sur­round­ings.”