SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD Keshawna McClean begged for her life before she was murdered in Laventille yesterday morning.

She was a passenger in a vehicle being driven through the Snake Valley area with a male companion.

As the driver pulled at the side of the road, three men approached the vehicle and pulled out the teenager before shooting her to death, according to McClean's sister Crystaline McLean.

Her companion then drove off fearing for his own life.

This was the description given by eye-witnesses to McClean's family, her elder sister Crystaline McClean said.

"They asked her who she was before killing her," she said.

The woman, who spoke to the Express yesterday by phone, said she constantly spoke to younger her sister about the company she kept but she always turned a deaf ear.

She said her sister was never involved in any criminal activities, but believed she was killed because of bad company.

The police said they also believed this was why the young woman was killed.

Investigators said McClean was not known to be involved in any illegal activities, but believed she was killed because of the gang-related activities by some of her close associates.

"Even though she is a woman and she was not involved in anything illegal, we know for a fact that her killing was gang-related," said one officer.

Crystaline said her sister, who originally lived at Rudolph Charles Link Road, Laventille, had recently moved in with a man whom her family disapproved of.

"I last saw her about two or three weeks ago and I was quarreling with her because of the person who she was with because I mean he is a big man. You know when you talk to children sometimes they would be hasty and so on and they like to feel like they are bigger than you?

"Well when I talk to her, she used to say she could do anything she want, so I just left her alone," said Crystaline.

Asked how she described the country's crime situation now that it has hit home, Crystaline said: "Right now everybody unhappy, everybody sad, everybody angry. Everybody is just mad right about now and hurting at the same time. The crime situation? It is sickening, it is so sickening. What they did to my sister was a big disrespect to my whole family," she said.

McClean's killing has carried the country's murder toll for the year so far to 210 as compared to 197 for the corresponding period last year according to an Express tally.

Investigations are continuing.