Police vow to capture attackers in Clarendon massacre

By Clinton McGregor    

 

The Police High Command says a massive search has been launched for the men behind Sunday night's mass shooting in Cherry Tree Lane, Four Paths, Clarendon, in which eight people were killed and nine others hospitalised.

 

Deputy Commissioner of Police Fitz Bailey toured the community on Monday afternoon along with Prime Minister Andrew Holness and National Security Minister Dr. Horace Chang.

 

The shooting has sparked public outrage and DCP Bailey promised that those involved will be found. 

 

"We have engaged in a lot of initiative, both investigative and operational initiatives. We have actually imposed a 96-hour curfew within this immediate environment, and there's a significant deployment in other communities as well. And the objective for the deployment in this community is to provide that assurance or that reassurance, as well as to ensure that the citizens can go about freely and to provide that protection for the community."

 

"The perpetrators for the crime, we are pursuing them and we promise you, as a community, that we are going to find them. We are going to bring them to justice," he pledged. 

 

It's reported that a group of more than 50 people had gathered at a bingo and birthday party sometime after 8 o'clock when a motor car with armed men drove up.

 

Three men alighted and began firing indiscriminately into the crowd.

 

Radio Jamaica News was informed that the hoodlums opened fire on other people in another section of the community during the rampage, killing one of them.

 

Investigators say the men were firing an M16 rifle and nine millimeter pistols.

 

The deceased are eight-year-old Aiden Bartley, a student of Four Paths Primary School; 27-year-old cosmetologist Kavel Daley; 50-year-old Lawrence Francis, a construction worker; and 20-year-old cashier Diamond Bennett.

 

Also killed were 68-year-old butcher Errol Stewart, otherwise called 'Wagga'; Courtney Messam, otherwise called 'Dummy'; and a woman known only as Margaret.

 

Nine others, including a one-year-old, have been hospitalised with bullet wounds.

 

 

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the state has declared an all out assault on criminal gangs across the country following the massacre.

 

Speaking with members of the media in Cherry Tree Lane on Monday, Mr. Holness said the evidence showed that the victims were hunted and shot by the hoodlums in a deliberate, callous and vicious manner. 

 

"I want the criminals who are involved in this to take my words very seriously. I am personally looking on all areas of the organisation to ensure that all the resources necessary from the state, whether it is the financing, whether it is the international cooperation, whether it is the legislative support, will be made available to security forces to pursue this relentlessly. They must either meet a judge or meet their maker, whichever they choose. But Jamaica cannot countenance this kind of crime, where people feel they have the impunity to in one act take so many lives, or take any lives whatsoever," declared the Prime Minister, who insisted the state will not spare any resources in the fight against gangs. 

 

He argued that gangs are already being diminished, with the number of active criminal gangs falling from 380 four years ago to 185 currently in operation. 

 

"Today, I gave a directive to the National Security Council that we must eradicate, eliminate, diminish, wipe out all the gangs that exist - every single one of them - no matter how they feel that they are connected, no matter how they feel that they have resources and they are protected by whoever in the society. This is a tipping point. And as I said in the press conference, every gang leader now should take weh demself." 

 

 

In the meantime, National Security Minister Dr. Horace Chang said the government is to review legislation to strengthen the framework for dealing with people caught with illegal weapons.

 

Dr. Chang, who was also at Cherry Tree Lane on Monday afternoon, warned that the authorities intend to crush criminal gangs operating between Clarendon and St. Catherine in the wake of Sunday night's mass shooting.

 

"Using automatic weapons to fire on innocent citizens is an act of terror, and it frightens the community, and when you get mass murder at this level, it is of course troubling to all of us and to all Jamaicans. The ministry and the government takes this very seriously and will take every step within current legislation and whatever it is at our disposal within the security forces to protect citizens, prevent reprisal and apprehended and disrupt the gangs. Every gangster, every criminal in the area between Clarendon and St. Catherine in particular, must today understand that we are coming for them," he warned. 

 

'Senseless massacre'   

 

Opposition Leader Mark Golding has strongly condemned what he described as a senseless massacre.

 

Mr. Golding lamented that Jamaica is sickened by yet another depraved act of wanton violence.

 

He described the incident as a terrorist attack and argued that the mass shooting is a direct assault on the society and cannot be tolerated under any circumstance. 

 

"I stand ready to cooperate with the government to achieve bipartisan constitutional action, to come to grips with this utterly untenable situation. The only way forward is for us to work together and to find consensus around practical solutions that can make the change that Jamaica needs," he acknowledged.