Four fatally shot by police in downtown Kingston identified

 

The four men who were fatally shot by the police during a gunbattle along Orange Street in downtown Kingston on Wednesday morning, have been identified.

 

They are 17-year-old Daniel Rose, of Mark Lane; Romain Lewis, otherwise called 'Bones', of Sirgany Drive, Kingston 2; 19-year-old Steven Rochester, a carpenter of Love Lane; and 44-year-old Garnell Jackson, of Garden Terrace, New Heaven, Kingston 20.

 

The men were shot during a shootout with the police along Orange Street and Charles Street sometime after 1 o'clock Wednesday morning.

 

A policeman was shot and wounded in the exchange.

 

Five firearms, including two M16 rifles, were seized.

 

Superintendent Beresford Williams, Commanding Officer for the Kingston Central Police Division, told Radio Jamaica News that the men were members of a criminal gang and had gone into the area to carry out a reprisal attack. 

 

"We had a murder last Friday, along King Street. The man who was killed, from all our intelligence, is a member of the Taliban gang, and it was believed that the murder was carried out by a breakaway faction of the Taliban gang. A dispute that has been going on for over two years, resulted in the loss of several lives. So the incident last night, we think, from all the indication, that...men from the Taliban gang came to reprise that killing." 

 

Superintendent Williams said the police are continuing their manhunt for the other two suspects who escaped.

 

One of them is believed to have been shot.