Three men were killed and two per­sons wound­ed an hour apart in two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents along the east-west cor­ri­dor yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

In the first in­ci­dent, po­lice said Ak­il Pierre, 23 and Mark Seignoret, 45, were sit­ting in the gallery of their home at the cor­ner of Hall and Ed­ward Streets, off Sher­wood Park, Ari­ma, at around 12.40 pm when they were con­front­ed by a masked gun­man who shot them sev­er­al times be­fore run­ning away.

A woman who was stand­ing near the men at the time of the at­tack was grazed by bul­lets on her right shoul­der and right calf.

Res­i­dents heard the gun­shots and on check­ing saw the men and woman bleed­ing.

The wound­ed trio were tak­en to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty where Pierre and Seignoret were de­clared dead.

Short­ly af­ter, at around 1.55 pm, po­lice were called to a car wash on up­per Sev­enth Av­enue, Mal­ick where 23-year-old Eli­jah Sam­bury was gunned down.

Po­lice said Sam­bury was lim­ing with a 21-year-old man near the car wash when a black hatch­back Nis­san Ti­i­da drove near them.

Two gun­men got out of the car and shot both men, killing Sam­bury in­stant­ly, as the killers got back in the car and drove off.

A re­port was made and a de­scrip­tion of the get­away car cir­cu­lat­ed via an All Points Bul­letin, as of­fi­cers of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force in­ter­cept­ed the car on the La­dy Young Road, Mor­vant, near Massy Mo­tors, how­ev­er, two sus­pects got out of the car and ran away.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors found 30 spent 5.56 shells at the scene.

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived at the scene, res­i­dents re­called hear­ing the sound of au­to­mat­ic gun­fire as they ducked for cov­er.

“I heard plen­ty shots. I was home and I just ran down here, be­cause I have my fam­i­ly lim­ing here,” on res­i­dent said.

“By the time I reach here I see his (Sam­bury’s) fam­i­ly bawl­ing around the body.

“If I was lim­ing there I could have picked up a shot. It mak­ing me feel like I can’t go back to send my car to get washed there be­cause no­body ex­pect­ing this to hap­pen so ran­dom­ly.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent told Guardian Me­dia that they were not pleased with the po­lice re­sponse time as they claimed a po­lice ve­hi­cle was parked near­by and could have pre­vent­ed the es­cape of the killers soon­er.

“Those fel­las told the po­lice, ‘Look the car go­ing there!’ the car fly out right there and the po­lice were still try­ing to fig­ure out what was hap­pen­ing.”

These three mur­ders brought the mur­der toll to 42 for the year thus far.