(Jamaica Observer) – Gunmen went on a murder spree in the Corporate Area and St Catherine on Tuesday, killing seven persons in an almost 15-hour span.
Five of the murders, including two double killings, occurred in the St Andrew North Police Division, pushing the murder tally in that area to 27 since the start of the year.
Police were initially only able to identify four of the dead. They are:
. Petrojam accountant Andre Jenniere, 45, and his wife, 39-year-old Carolyn – a lecturer at the University of Technology (UTech) School of Nursing;
. 63-year-old wholesale operator Elsie Armstrong; and
. gas station operator Sylvan McPherson, 38;
Among the dead was a security guard who the police alleged was the brother of dancehall artiste Desmond Ballentine, more popularly known as ‘Ninjaman’.
In the first incident, which occurred at about 3 am, gunmen forced open a window to the Jennieres’ home on Cypress Drive in Red Hills, St Andrew and sprayed them with bullets.
Police said that their blooded corpses were discovered shortly before dawn by their nine-year-old daughter, who, along with her younger brother, slept through their parents’ murder in a separate room.
Frightened neighbours, relatives and co-workers who gathered outside the Jennieres’ home questioned the killers’ motives.
“Why would someone want to hurt Carolyn. Carolyn would never hurt a fly,” said a grieving Dr Sarafadeen Adebayo, head of the School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences at UTech. “She does not deserve this… Government will have to do something about this [crime] problem ‘cause when you have professionals who are supposed to help in the development of the country being murdered, it spells destruction for our future.”
In the Armstrong murder, police said that they were puzzled as to how her attackers gained access to her apartment at the newly-opened Isles of Grosvenor housing scheme on Grosvenor Terrace, also in St Andrew, and murdered her as well as the security guard.
Both were found with stab wounds in separate apartments at about 6:00 am, police said.
While the cops were processing that scene about 3 pm, gunshots rang out at the Total gas station near the foot of Red Hills. On their arrival at the scene, police found McPherson’s bullet-riddled body. The police were told that men on a motorcycle drove up and shot McPherson. He died on the spot.
In the St Catherine North Police Division, police are probing the murders of two unidentified men whose bodies were found with gunshot wounds to the back of their heads in bushes at Featherbed Lane in Spanish Town early Tuesday morning.
