Cay Hill: --- Relatives and friends of Sheldon Thomas are mourning his sudden demise while police are busy trying to find the persons who are responsible for yet another execution style murder on St. Maarten.Several detectives and members of the forensic department responded to Cay Hill early Friday morning when they were informed that the body of man was seen lying alongside the road with gunshot wounds to the head.
Sources say the residents of G. Alexis Arnell Road heard someone screaming followed by gunshots around 04:05am but they did not pay much attention to the commotion.
The body was found just before the second turn on G. Alexis Arnell Road in Cay Hill. Police Spokesman Geronimo Juliet identified the victim as Sheldon Thomas formerly of the St. Peters area. Thomas was also well known to police. SMN News learnt that Thomas was in police detention and he was recently released. The source said Thomas was a suspect in an ongoing investigation, that investigation they said will now have to be shelved since there is no longer a suspect.
According to residents of Cay Hill, it appears as though the killers called the young man out of his house and shot him. They said Thomas lives in close proximity to where his body was found with his girlfriend. While it is believed that Thomas must have been shot and killed on the spot, police and forensics who were on the scene on Friday morning did not find any spent shells at the scene of the crime.However, Chief Prosecutor Hans Mos said he could not and will not say if Thomas was killed on the spot or if the killers dumped his body there. When asked if knew if the recent murder victims knew each other Mos said he did not know that for sure.
When asked if the same team of detectives from Team Grootschalige Opsporing (TGO) will be leading the Thomas murder investigation Mos said a different team will be handling the case because the TGO team currently has five murder cases and one attempted murder case to focus on and they do not want to lose track. The Chief Prosecutor said if the team that is investigating the murder of Sheldon Thomas gets information that would form a link to the other cases then the two teams will be put together.
Sheldon Thomas is the third person to be murdered in the past two days and the tenth for the year 2011. SMN News learnt that the murder victims this year were all friends, but this information could not be confirmed.
