(Jamaica Observer) The gruesome discovery of the body of a 14-year-old girl wrapped in a sheet on the side of a road in Kingston 11; the killing of a special constable by gunmen dressed in police garb along Grange Lange in St Catherine; and the brazen attack on a businessman in the upper St Andrew community of Temple Hall kept detectives in the Corporate Area and St Catherine busy between late Tuesday and yesterday morning.
The slender, badly bruised body of Shariefa Saddler, who hailed from Joshua Edwards Avenue in Olympic Gardens, was dumped on Lothiam Avenue — which is in close proximity to where she lived — by men in a motor car shortly after 11:00 am. The teen is believed to have been abducted while on her way to classes at the Haile Selassie High School earlier in the morning. The body was still clad in the Haile Selassie uniform she had left home in with a men’s tie knotted around her neck.
“Ah pass people a pass on the road this morning and seh dem see a car drive up in the area and dump the body [wrapped] in a sheet,” one woman said. Speculation that Shariefa may have been raped remains unsupported by the cops who say it’s too early to tell. “Police are waiting on [the results of the] post-mortem before they disclose additional details in the case,” said one policeman on the scene.
The police also could not say what was the motive for the killing. “We are still trying to gather information in the case and are also trying to establish a motive,” Senior Superintendent Delroy Hewitt told the Jamaica Observer.
Superintendent Hewitt was accompanied to the area by several senior officers, including Assistant Commissioner of Police George Quallo. The police search of the area led to the discovery of a bag belonging to the girl in a nearby gully, some metres away from where her body was found lying face down.
The killing and the dumping of the body in broad daylight left residents in shock.
“How man can be so cold? As a mother, to see how the criminals deal with the little girl it makes you afraid to send your child on the road,” one woman said, as she and others argued that the child’s killers, when found, should be subjected to jungle justice.
