The community of Samacan on Seaward Drive in St Andrew is tense amid a wave of violence linked to a gang feud in the area.

In the latest incident on Thursday afternoon, a popular soup vendor of the community, Krishna “Baba” Mykoo, was shot multiple times by gunmen.

The 47-year-old soup vendor was reportedly at his stall about 1:00 pm when a motorcycle pulled up with masked men who opened fire, hitting the vendor several times in his upper body.

He was rushed to hospital where he has been admitted in serious condition.

When the Jamaica Observer visited the community early Friday afternoon, there was a deafening silence. The streets were vacant and businesses shuttered.

According to residents who spoke to our news team, some residents have vacated the area out of fear.

“Since Baba shooting, plenty of people leave because Baba is a working yute. Right now around four yard empty. Furniture and everything inside but people just leave,” the soup vendor’s uncle, Noel Mykoo, said.

He described his nephew, a father of two, as a hard-working man who has been operating his soup business in the community for more than five years.

“He is a mechanic, and him run his little shop; fry him corn, him fish; him boil him soup weh nuh take no time to sell off. He is a working yute man, that’s why you see the whole place stay so because people surprise Baba get shot,” Noel shared.

“The people are in fear. I am telling you that is what is going on here, and the entire area is like family — majority of the people here are family,” he added.

He said the community is not known for violent crimes.

“In this place here it never used to go on so. The community here was the best community out of the whole place. Police officers talk about it, but they say after a storm there must be a calm. I’m happy that the JDF [Jamaica Defence Force] and the JCF [Jamaica Constabulary Force] working in here,” Noel said.

Mykoo’s shooting followed the murder of 34-year-old Ricardo Anderson on Tuesday. Anderson, a labourer of the community, was fatally shot on Seaward Drive by unknown assailants.

Head of the St Andrew South police, acting Senior Superintendent Damion Manderson, told the Observer that the violence is linked to an ongoing dispute among members of the Samacan Gang.

“The incident is part of a continuation of a series of incidents; primarily, there is a group of men in the Samacan Gang who have fallen out of grace, and as such, there have been tit for tats. It involves related members and those who are non-related,” Manderson said.

“It spans as far as St Thomas, where these families are originally from. The murders that St Thomas experienced in recent weeks would have been a part of this same family, and so it is part of what we have been trying to quell for the past three to four weeks, which is an upsurge in the intra-gang conflict in the Samacan area of Olympic Gardens,” Manderson said.

He said the police have identified key players in the feud and are asking them to turn themselves in.

According to Manderson, those key players are Alex Madden, a former JCF member who resides on Kenton Avenue; a man known only as Bounty; Dean “Burky” Sutherland; Dane “Jazzy” White; a man known only as Kimani; Mark Harris Sr; and a man known only as Blacks or Bun Up.

“We continue to impose our presence within that space. We are, of course, reassuring our residents of our continued support. We are currently in our second 48-hour curfew in that community, and we will remain there as long as it takes to restore order,” Manderson said.

Councillor Patrick Roberts (People’s National Party, Molynes Division) is urging residents to work with the police in bringing an end to the ongoing conflict in the community.

“The residents are the ones who have to come together to put a stop to it. It cannot be the police alone because the police can only go by eyewitness reports and the facts of what is causing the conflict and the difference. If that is the situation, how best can the community solve this? They are the ones that are being affected, especially the children,” Roberts said.

Acknowledging that residents may be fearful of sharing information due to internal conflict, Roberts urged the them to use secure channels to share information with law enforcement officers.

“Many lives have already been lost, and if it is a situation to save lives, then it is worth it,” the councillor said.