Except for a stabbing death Friday in Ocho Rios, there has been no murder in St Ann in over two weeks as the parish and others in the Area 2 police region see relative calm.
The absence of murders comes as the country is recording nearly a 20 percent increase in murder and an outbreak of violence and homicides in old time hot spots such as Kingston West and Central and in rural parishes with growing violence such as Hanover, Westmoreland and Clarendon along with St James, long plagued by crime.
There has been a relative calm regarding murders in the parishes of St Ann and St Mary over the past three weeks. Police were unable on Monday to give the North Coast Times details of the statistics on murder for St Ann and St Mary. However The Times reporting has shown no murder in St Ann since June 6, except for one last Friday morning in Ocho Rios. There has been no murder in St Mary since late May. In Portland, the other parish making up Area 2, there was a murder last week, taking the total in that parish to three since this year. That’s one fewer than the same period last year.
In early June, The Times reported 28 murders up to then in St Ann, with six in a eleven-day period.
Head of Area Two police, assistant commissioner of police (ACP) Fitz Bailey has revealed that there has been a 20 percent reduction in major crimes, including murders across the St Ann, St Mary and Portland, which comprise Area Two.
In an interview with the North Coast Times, ACP Bailey attributed the downward trend in crime to robust policing, community work across the Area Two division by the police, motivated staff (police officers), better area coordinating and the support from general public.
While not having the breakdown for murders in all parishes, ACP Bailey pointed out that in the parish of St Ann, 60 percent of the murders were of a domestic nature that involved the use of the knife or the machete.
He said that generally persons had a problem in the parish of resolving conflicts and needed to handle “conflicts much better.” He gave the example of a case in which two men on a construction site in the parish of St Ann had a simple disagreement over $500. That escalated into an argument resulting and one man being killed by another.
ACP Bailey explained that the Community Safety and Security Branch (CSSB) of the police force was trying to address the issue of domestic related murders in the parish.
In the meantime, through information from The Times archives, the last known murder committed in St Ann since one last Friday, June 23 was that of a mentally-ill, ex-convict who is alleged to have attacked and killed a popular Ocho Rios shopkeeper, June 6. The mentally-ill man, 28-year-old Kayson Walker, alias ‘Bum Bum’, or ‘Skel’ also of Carib Heights/Bypass Ocho Rios, was shot dead by the police in what they said were attempts to arrest him. This was after he had inflicted wounds to Antonio ‘Workie’ Bryan on Tuesday night, June 6. Bryan succumbed to his wounds at hospital.
DECLINE ALSO IN PORTLAND
The parish of Portland has also seen a reduction in murders. In speaking to the North Coast Times, head of the parish’s police, deputy superintendent (DSP) Rex Swearing explained that Portland had recorded three murders when compared to four last year. There was also a 15 to 25 percent reduction in major crimes in the parish.
DSP Swearing also credited the police’s community activities across the parish and the robust policing attributed to the declines.
The last murder recorded in Portland was that of a woman on June 17. Police reports at that time said that the woman was fatally shot and her 11-year-old daughter shot and wounded while sleeping in their one bedroom house in Reach, Portland.
The woman’s four-year-old son, who was in the house at the time, was not hurt.
Reports are that the woman, who is said to be a higgler, was at home sleeping with her children when a lone gunman entered the one bedroom dwelling and shot her. The gunman also shot her daughter in the ankle before leaving.
The woman was pronounced dead by a doctor who came to the scene and her daughter rushed to hospital.
According to DSP Swearing, the police are still carrying out investigations into that incident.
