Thugs from the Corporate Area and their rural counterparts are exchanging and selling guns used in murders and shootings as a means of trying to ensure that the perpetrators are not caught, THE STAR has found.

Instead of keeping them around and making it easier for the police to match them to any incident, ardent gunmen say they prefer to send away 'hot' guns to other areas.

"A nuh every man believe inna dat but yu have man and man weh do crime and den send weh di gun .... Yu call dem gun deh hot gun and man do dat fi try and distance demself from di crime, even if police find di gun and realise seh it did use in a one murder dem still naw go know a who actually do di murder," a well known thug from east Kingston explained.

Though they claim it is in an effort to stay one step ahead of the law, police are aware of 'hot' guns being rented, sold and exchanged but could not speak to it being an effort to hide the link between the criminal and the crime.

"We know guns are rented and sold and we have found cases where they have been linked to murders and shooting," CIB head Assistant Commissioner Les Green said. He however, claimed to be unaware ofthe STAR's finding.

given a gun

Another thug from Clarendon also claimed to knowing of the practice and admitted that some months ago he was given a gun by friends in Montego Bay, St James, who warned him that it was used in a number of shootings.

He said the choice was his as to whether or not he wanted to take the risk and keep it.

"Yea man dem ting deh gwaan man ... Gun move roun eno, and from a illegal gun den yu know seh man affi fire it, so it ago get link to something or another. Me did have one wah day and is a next man me pass it on to," the 33-year-old man said during a telephone conversation.

Over a year ago, the St Andrew north police seized an illegal gun following a reported shoot-out with members of a patrol team and a group of alleged robbers along Red Hills Road.

One of the alleged robbers was fatally shot and a Beretta 9mm pistol taken from him.

Following investigations, the gun was found to be linked to a number of shootings in St Catherine and was reported stolen from a businessman John Amos in Linstead during a robbery incident in which he was also shot and killed.

Similarly, a .38 revolver which was seized on June 28 by the police in Hanover was later found to be linked to at least three shootings in Kingston earlier this year. Sources say the shootings occurred in the Tavern and Waltham Park areas of St Andrew, and in a section of east Kingston.