Murdered on his route, body dumped
Family and friends of 34-year-old taxi operator Courtney Edwards believe he knew that man who shot him dead on Friday evening on a route he has run for years. Taxi operators and close family members say Edwards was known not to carry strangers in his taxi especially late in the evenings. They say he would question a strange face, ask where the person was going and then order him out of the vehicle if he still wasn’t comfortable. Edwards knew the route well. His brother Kevin said they had both been working Ocho Rios to Great Pond for more than a dozen years. On Friday evening just before 8 o’clock Courtney ran his last trip. It is believed that he dropped off several passengers in Great Pond, a large district of OchoRios and had one passenger left when he went to the Warrick Mount area. The taxi operator was shot dead and thrown from his vehicle, a silver coloured Toyota Fielder 2010 that has not been located up to Monday. His body was left on the roadway and that is where his siblings saw it after being called. Said sister Stacy Edwards: “I don’t ever want to see somebody like that again. My brother was on the road in his own blood.” Stacy said it was the second time in three years she was seeing a sibling like this, recalling that her sister Sasha Edwards, a hotel worker at then Beaches Boscobel had been stabbed to death at Milford Road in late 2011. Sasha’s boyfriend is still in court on a charge of murder.
BIG HOUSE
Kevin says his brother was looking forward to building a big house and going off on a ship to work. He was running the taxi for someone who lived in Steer town. There are many theories about why Courtney Edwards was shot dead. One of them is that there was a long running dispute with a taxi operator and another was that it might have involved a court case. There is also a view that the stealing of the car was only a smokescreen to hide the fact that this was a set up. Police have no strong leads and want taxi operators and others who might have seen those who went on Courtney Edwards’ last trip to tell the police what they know. Edwards leaves behind two children, one of whom is less than a year old. The news has worsened the health of his ailing father. His mother who is overseas is coming home for the funeral.
