WESTMORELAND, Jamaica — Copeland Sankey, otherwise called Tupac, one of the six alleged members of the Westmoreland-based King Valley gang who were freed of gang charges in July 2020, was on Tuesday morning shot and killed in Grange Hill in the parish.

According to information reaching OBSERVER ONLINE, Sankey, supposedly a farmer, and two others were amongst a group of armed men aboard a motorcar in the Crowder community in search of a man known as “Big Youth” after 5 in the morning.

According to sources, upon reaching the Crowder community, the men kicked open the door to a dwelling in search of their rival but did not find him.

READ: One killed, two others injured in Grange Hill attack

In traveling along a cane field road on the way from the Crowder community, the vehicle with Sankey aboard was ambushed by a group of armed men who opened fire and a shootout ensued. The driver of the vehicle with Sankey, who was injured in the shooting, sped away to the Savanna-la-mar Public General Hospital where Sankey was pronounced dead upon arrival at 6:01 am.

A search of Sankey’s person was conducted where 18 live 9MM and 14 live 5.56 cartridges were found. A subsequent search was then conducted of the motorcar and one black 9MM pistol with an empty magazine was found. The two men who were aboard the vehicle with Sankey, who were also shot and injured in the melee, have been arrested on reasonable suspicion of illegal possession of firearm and placed under police guard.

Tupac along with five others had been charged in an indictment containing 11 counts on suspicion of being part of a criminal organisation, providing benefits to a criminal organisation, and conspiring to commit murder, rape and robbery with aggravation from as early as 2013.

The men had been in custody since October 2018 but were freed after trial judge Chief Justice Bryan Sykes declared them not guilty citing an absence of “support” for evidence given by the star prosecution witness as a huge deciding factor.

The star witness, over several days at the start of the trial in January when he testified via live video link from an undisclosed location, told the court that the alleged gang members including himself were involved in the deadly lottery scamming scheme, committed murders and rapes in the course of robberies, and were also murderers for hire.

The witness said he had, in 2018, handed himself over to the police and decided to give evidence against them after they killed seven of his own family members, including his father, aunt, two uncles, a cousin, his sister, and an in-law, in seeking to pull him out of hiding.