A man was shot dead on Kandawala Road in Ratmalana on Saturday afternoon, police said.

The victim, a 58-year-old three-wheeler driver, was taken to the Colombo South Teaching Hospital in Kalubowila, where he died of his injuries. Ada Derana reported that he was pronounced dead on admission.

Two separate police teams have been assigned to the investigation. Police Spokesperson Assistant Superintendent of Police F. U. Wootler said the man was allegedly involved in drug trafficking.

No arrests had been reported by Sunday morning.

Conflicting accounts of the attack

The outlets that reported the shooting differ on how it was carried out. The Daily Mirror said two unidentified gunmen arrived on a motorcycle and opened fire on a man seated inside a three-wheeler before fleeing the scene. Ada Derana said the victim was standing beside a three-wheeler near Kandawala Junction when he was shot by a single gunman wearing a helmet, who had arrived on a motorcycle with another person.

Both accounts agree that the attackers travelled by motorcycle and that the shooting took place in daylight at the same location.

A recurring method

The attack follows a pattern police have repeatedly described in recent months: assailants riding pillion on a motorcycle, firing on a stationary or slow-moving target, and leaving on the same vehicle. The same method was used in the Kuppiyawatta shooting in Dematagoda in July, where CCTV captured two attackers on a motorcycle opening fire on a man and pursuing him on foot.

Police Media Division figures released in late July recorded 21 shooting incidents nationwide so far this year, leaving 14 people dead and 12 injured. Police have attributed most of them to rivalries between organised crime groups.

Saturday’s shooting is the second reported in as many days, after a fishing boat skipper was wounded near Mirissa Junction on Friday. Ratmalana lies within the same southern Colombo belt as Mount Lavinia and Dehiwala, where several armed attacks have been reported since June.

Investigations are continuing.

Update (September 18): a suspect is identified, seven weeks on

Police have identified the gunman in this killing as the same man arrested over the grenade attack in Dehiwala on 11 September that killed two children, NewsFirst reported.

The shooting was allegedly carried out on the instructions of an organised crime figure currently residing overseas, police said. That is the first motive attribution and the first identification of a suspect in this case, which had gone without a reported arrest since August.

It also fits the drug-trafficking attribution police made at the time. In the Dehiwala attack the intended target was the home of an alleged drug distributor linked to an organised crime gang, and ASP Wootler said of the victim here that he was allegedly involved in drug trafficking — placing both killings in the same feud, seven weeks apart, with the same man accused of carrying out both.

Police have now arrested three suspects over the Dehiwala attack, aged 39, 30 and 23, all residents of the Dehiwala area, detained in Ridimaliyadda, Dehiwala and Boralesgamuwa. NewsFirst does not say which of the three is the alleged gunman in this case.

A note on the place name. NewsFirst’s September report locates this shooting on “Kandawala Road” in Mount Lavinia. In August, the Daily Mirror, Ada Derana and NewsFirst itself all placed it in Ratmalana. Kandawala Road runs through the Ratmalana–Mount Lavinia boundary area and both names have been applied to it, so this reads as a naming difference rather than a second incident — but NewsFirst does not state that the shooting it describes is the one reported in August, and no outlet reconciles the two place names.

Still not reported. NewsFirst does not name the suspect or the organised crime figure said to have ordered the killing, say which country he is in, or state whether extradition has been sought. It does not say what evidence supports the identification — CCTV, ballistics, a confession or witness testimony — whether the suspect has been charged with this murder as well as the grenade attack, or whether he has been produced before a magistrate. The victim is still not named in any report.

Sources