Two teen boys were found shot to death on Sunday morning on a dirt road off Graham Drive in Yellow Elder Gardens, raising the country’s murder count to 36 and 37.

The bodies were discovered shortly after 9am. Officer in Charge of the Central Detective Unit, Chief Superintendent Clayton Fernander told reporters police had no motive for the shootings at the time and he appealed to members of the public for assistance.

“The bodies were discovered by persons in the area, there are a lot of officers on the ground doing door to door inquiries to find out what happened.

“There is no motive at this time but the victims appear to be two youngsters, we continue to be in these communities and this Yellow Elder Gardens area is a hotspot and we continue to saturate these areas.

“We are also falling in line to see if anybody has gone missing over the last 24 hours so we are appealing to persons that haven’t heard from a loved one to please come forth,” Mr. Fernander said.

The incident also prompted a response by Prime Minister Perry Christie.

“You have the police reports of two young men being headshot last night, this shows there is something going on that we have to have a holistic approach to it but at the same time we have to be resolved as a people to understand that we can’t allow this to continue.

“This is bigger than the FNM, bigger than the PLP bigger than the DNA this is about our country,” Mr. Christie said.

The area’s representative Arnold Forbes spoke to the importance of proper socializing as a deterrent to the number of murders in the country.

“Unfortunately, we have had two more murders, this is something we have to curb, while people believe that saturation is the key, you can’t stop someone from taking a weapon and shooting someone on the spot.

“What we need to do is to re-socialize our people, the solution is re-socializing our communities, look at the way we bring up our children, and resolve our disputes.

“We need to look within ourselves as a people, a lot of the individuals that commit these acts are not socialized and do not know how to act as human beings,” Mr. Forbes said.

The Free National Movement’s candidate for the Mt. Moriah constituency Marvin Dames, who has been very vocal about the escalating levels of crime in the country, was also present on the scene and spoke to reporters about the FNM’s crime plan to target “hot spot” areas such as Yellow Elder.

“We not only have a plan for Yellow Elder but The Bahamas, campaigning in this area just a week ago I spoke with a young man who said in this area alone they would have lost some 22 young men and it really hit home for me.

“When you see occurrences such as this it points to a bigger problem and these are indicators we need to do a better job of pre-empting what we’re seeing,” he said.

“We need better intelligence and more concentration in terms of boots on the ground especially in hot spot areas. We need to look at proactivity, presence and visibility.

“Unless we get to what’s causing this we will continue to pick up bodies along the way that is why there is a need for a National Intelligence Agency,” Mr. Dames added.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 911 or 919, the Central Detective Unit at 502-9991 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 328-TIPS.