Hours after Terrence “Ochro” Carter was shot dead at his home in Morvant on Tuesday morning, police swooped down in his community, arresting four of his neighbours in connection with his murder. Police said as crime scene investigators and homicide detectives had finished processing Carter’s crime scene, officers of the North Eastern Division Task Force received information that the crime was perpetrated by neighbours.
The officers, led by Insp Roger Alexander and Sgt Cornelius Samuel, conducted an exercise in the area and arrested four suspects, ages 19 to 27, who were liming at the side of the road. After questioning them, the officers searched their homes. During the searches the officers found illegal firearms at the homes of three of the men. The suspects were then handed over to homicide detectives investigating Carter’s murder. They were in custody up to late yesterday and were being interrogated by investigators.
The three illegal firearms, along with a fourth that was found abandoned in a patch of bushes near Carter’s home were taken to the Forensic Science Centre in St James where ballistic testing will be done to determine if they match bullet fragments recovered during Carter’s autopsy at the centre. The recovered guns were a 12 gauge pump action shotgun and two 9mm pistols. Investigators said Carter and the four suspects were well known to police and belonged to a gang which operates in their community.
“We understand that there may have been a falling out within the gang and Carter was possibly killed as a result of this,” a police source said yesterday. Shortly after 8 am on Tuesday, Carter was at his home on Chaconia Avenue, Morvant when two gunmen entered and shot him serveral times in the head and chest before escaping. Constable Daniel Highly of the NEDTF and detectives of the Homicide Bureau are continuing investigations.