By Sam StrangewaysThe “callous and cowardly” murder of “normal, decent” Jason Smith is still baffling detectives more than six months after he was shot.Officers investigating the slaying of the 22-year-old on May 1 have been unable to pinpoint any reason for him to have been gunned down in the dead of night on Overview Hill, Pembroke.Forensic and other evidence suggests the shooting was carried out by members of a gang, yet there is no indication that Mr Smith, of Warwick, was ever associated with a gang or involved in any criminal activity.Police said immediately after the murder that he could have been targeted by mistake but that theory has yet to be confirmed and no arrests have been made.Detective Inspector Jerome Laws, who is heading the murder inquiry, told The Royal Gazette: “There's no information to say it was mistaken identity. It's still not clear. The motive is still not clear.”Detective Chief Inspector Nicholas Pedro added: “We simply do not know why Mr Smith was shot. Whether he was or wasn't the intended victim, we do not know.“If there is a reason for him having been shot, no-one has come forward to the police to provide that information. We are still following up lines of inquiry. There are still some persons that we need to interview in relation to this matter.”Top of that list is anyone who saw Mr Smith on the evening of April 30, into the early hours of May 1, when he was socialising with friends in a “number of establishments in the City of Hamilton”.“He interacted with quite a number of people while he was out, said Det Ch Insp Pedro.“We have been speaking to those people to determine if there was anything that happened during the course of the night that may have prompted this action and, obviously, there are probably still people out there that do know something or did interact with him on that night that we haven't spoken to.“We'd like to speak to anyone who may have spoken to Jason Smith on the night he was murdered.”He said there was nothing to indicate the group of friends were “having anything but a good night out” but urged members of the public to rack their brains for any detail that could be useful.Mr Smith and his friends briefly visited Café Cairo on Front Street, before ending the evening at Moon nightclub, which they left after 3am.Det Insp Laws said: “We are interested in finding out if anyone saw anything suspicious that happened in Café Cairo or Moon nightclub, any altercation inside or outside the nightclub on Front Street.“It's just another line of inquiry. We are exploring every avenue to try and determine the reason for the shooting.”After their night out, Mr Smith and his friends headed to one of their homes on North Shore Road, Pembroke.Mr Smith travelled to the property in another friend's car. He went to get something from his own car, which had been parked earlier on Overview Hill, and was walking alone towards the house when he was targeted.He was just inside the driveway of the friend's house on Overview Hill when a lone gunman on foot approached him from behind and took aim just before 3.50am.The Regiment lance corporal died from two gunshot wounds to his stomach/midsection despite the efforts of one of his friends and the friend's mother, a nurse, to save his life.The masked shooter, who wore a dark hooded top, is believed to have fled on a motorcycle up Overview Hill, towards Mount Hill.Det Ch Insp Pedro said: “Mr Smith was not a gang member; however, the incident itself has all the hallmarks of being one committed by a gang member.“The callous and cowardly nature in which it was committed, where someone was masked up in the middle of the night on foot, coming in and shooting someone and running away; certainly, it leads us to believe that it was.“Forensically, there are aspects of the case, which I cannot divulge, obviously, that lead us to believe that it was committed by a gang member.”He added that Mr Smith was “seemingly, a normal, decent young man in the prime of his life who was about to go back to school”. The victim, he said, had a bright future and was from a “close-knit, loving family”.“It could be that he was mistaken for someone,” he said. “But, again, even the house he was at, it's not associated with gang activity.“So we are really seeking any assistance we can get in terms of determining why this young man was gunned down.”Mr Smith was killed close to the family home of two teenage brothers who are allegedly members of the Parkside gang.The younger brother, 17, was shot and injured in an attack on Friswell's Hill in June 2010, though his elder brother was understood to be the target.The older sibling, 19, was shot at but not injured outside the family home on Mount Hill the following month.Asked whether police were connecting those incidents with Mr Smith's murder, Det Ch Insp Pedro said they were being looked at as part of the inquiry but it was “difficult to say at this stage” if they were linked.* Mr Smith's case is the last in our series on the Island's unsolved gun murders since May 2009. In next Monday's edition of The Royal Gazette, we'll report on some of the work being done in Bermuda to tackle gang violence.To share any information on this topic or give feedback on the Speak Up Save Lives series, e-mail senior reporter Sam Strangeways at sstrangeways@royalgazette.bm or call 278-0155.