FIFTEEN-year-old Leon McCurdy of La Penitence, Georgetown, shot in the Paradise home of a businessman last week after an invasion, was part of a Kitty-based gang that would normally maraud in out-of-town communities, a source familiar with the now dead bandit confirmed to this newspaper yesterday.The Guyana Chronicle was told that the gang of which McCurdy had been a member would normally meet at a hotspot in Kitty to deliberate and plan their week’s activities amidst wanton smoking of marijuana, sometimes behind closed doors and sometimes openly.

Following his shooting death last week, the police were almost readily able to determine his identity, although they did not divulge same as quickly to the media. GPF ranks had raced to the Kitty hotspot that is the teen bandits’ favourite hangout, had cornered several young men present, and had taken them down for questioning in an apparent move to determine the identities of McCurdy’s accomplices.

The accomplices had departed the crime scene last week, leaving Leon McCurdy behind, and he was shot by the businessman as he attempted to flee from the crime scene.

The Guyana Chronicle has been informed that police, in the past, had been summoned on many occasions and were forced to conduct searches and detain several characters who would frequent the spot, which is popular in the Kitty area for harbouring mostly out-of-school young men.

Speaking with this newspaper on condition of anonymity, the source explained that the gang, because it is based in Kitty, would not normally prey on persons who live in that or contiguous communities within Georgetown.

They have adopted the approach of heading out of town to commit their robberies, which are mostly carried out with the use of firearms and sharp instruments.

The source explained that it is, as it were, standard operating procedure for the members to carry out their crimes in the fashion stated above, since they are unlikely to bump into their victims on a day-to-day basis if they are from out-of-town communities, as against those living in town.

The police, meanwhile, are continuing their hunt for the other two bandits, who were able to escape after robbing Eon Evans who operates a grocery shop in the Dazzell Housing Scheme on the East Coast of Demerara.