What draws people to Shaw Park Gardens is the stunning view of Ocho Rios almost as if within reach of an outstretched arm, and the beauty of the vegetation in the off the beaten path gardens once the playground of the ultra rich. But on Monday morning, the people and police gathered on the Old Hotel Road and a restaurant was the death of 45-year-old attractions manager. Dead is Wichcliffe Scott of Ras Common, Charles Town, St Mary. Mr Scott has been employed to the resort company for the last four years as manager. He had previously worked at Chukka Cove, St Ann, also in tourism. Reports are that about 10:10 two men entered the grounds from one of the heavily overgrown unofficial entrances or tracts leading into the upscale Shaw Park Gardens. It was raining. The two men entered the office occupied by Mr Scott. The men were said to have been there for about ten minutes before shots rang out.
Mr Scott was shot at least three times at his desk where police found his body. His licenced firearm was taken by his killers. The men escaped down another heavily overgrown path, police told The Times. Police sources said there was no alarm when the men entered the compound and Scott’s office as this was a regular occurrence. They pointed out that there were several ways to access the property, aside from the main gate and all of those entrance s were “heavily vegitated’ or had thick vegetation, a characteristic of the attraction.. A man who worked near to the property told The Times he heard at least seven gunshots before the men fled by a back entrance. There was one security guard on the grounds at the time but he was not at the building where Scott was shot.
One concern expressed by police as well as onlookers was the meagre security. “There was no security of any quality…no camera or so that could help us,” said a senior officer. Others expressed the view that they would have expected at least a few CCTV cameras and a half a dozen security officers at a tourism attraction and upscale residence such as that place with high priced villas. Scott, the father of two children with his second wife Esther left home and took his children to school Monday morning. One of them goes to school within a mile and a half from where her father worked and was shot dead. Mrs Scott, a hotel worker, said she had seen off her husband in the morning and he had called her later when he was at work. The next call she got about her husband came from her brother, who had been called and told the sad news. Shaking her head and stating how she had thrown herself to the ground at work as the news came in on her phone, Mrs Scott said Wichcliffe, her husband had been the best husband.
Mrs Scott, supported by her brother most of the time she stood on the rough roadway outside the yard where her husband worked said she feared for her daughter. “Her father is her life. He is everything to her…Her life,” Mrs Scott said mentioning that her daughter celebrates her eleventh birthday on Thursday December 11. The couple’s other child is a 15 year old boy and Mrs Scott, shaking as she was held by a female friend, said she would have to provide comfort for them. Up to the time the body was being moved, close to 3 p.m. as the family arranged to pick up the children for the mother to break the news to them, the children did not know their father who had taken them to school had done so for the last time. Up to Monday evening police had not determined a motive for the murder but nothing had been taken from the premises.
