Three die in Mandeville police shoot-out as cops chase bar robbery network

MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Officers in this parish say they remain intent on breaking up organised crime groups, with special focus on crews that raid bars and strip out poker machines. That pledge comes after a Saturday confrontation on Caledonia Road in which police fatally shot three people they say had ties to offenders in adjoining parishes and had been hitting drinking spots across Manchester.

“The group that was involved in the shoot-out, we have been tracking them for some time and, based on intelligence, we even recovered stolen items, including poker box parts at three premises two Fridays ago, tied to these three people,” a police source said.

Those killed were identified as Lester Morris, Travis Baker and Sutania Boothe, also known as Chun Chun. Authorities reported seizing two guns in the alleged exchange of fire.

According to the police account, a tip about a string of robberies reached them around 4:00 pm. They later stopped a car close to Horseshoe Curve. A senior officer said people inside that vehicle fired first at the police, who shot back. The gunfight stretched into an extended standoff. Boothe, Morris and Baker were removed from the car and taken to hospital, where doctors declared them dead on arrival.

The scene sits near where, the Saturday before, nursing student Deenekia Pounall and Sadefa Henry were killed in a taxi when a man pretending to be a passenger opened fire.

Baker and Morris were familiar faces to investigators. Both had earlier been taken into custody and charged with offences that included praedial larceny and robbery. In February 2024, police labelled Baker a third-generation thief when he was held roughly a week before his father, Neville, was also detained. At that point the younger Baker was one of three men charged with praedial larceny after a high-speed pursuit in Newport, Manchester. Officers found a ram goat in the boot of a Toyota Axio he was in. Neville Baker was later arrested with two other men after police recovered more than 600 pounds of stolen carrots and Irish potatoes in Kingsland, near Mandeville.

On March 2, 2025, Neville Baker was shot dead in his vehicle at the entrance to Hatfield in Manchester. He had previously been imprisoned for firearm offences.

Police have called Morris “a poker box specialist” for his alleged role in stealing and stripping the gaming units. In 2022, St Elizabeth police noted that higher-end machines with touch screens could fetch as much as $500,000 apiece, while older models might bring up to $300,000.

Boothe, the woman among the three killed Saturday, was accused by police of playing a central part in the robbery runs. “She would be the lookout and the spy for the group. She would go into bars and scope out the place and then call in her cronies,” a senior police source alleged.

“These criminals are not just based in Manchester, it is a network of them spanning multiple parishes. We have reason to believe [that] this team may be connected to the multimillion-dollar robbery heist in Red Bank near Junction, St Elizabeth, last month, in which two of their cronies perished in a fiery crash while trying to elude the highway patrol team,” added the police source.

Investigators believe a Toyota Noah that caught fire and killed both people inside after crashing on the Williamsfield highway in the early morning hours served as the escape car for thieves who struck the St Elizabeth venue on June 27.

Police say the hunt for others tied to the robbery pattern continues. “There are others of them out there and we will not relent until the criminal network is dismantled,” said a senior police source.