Three killed in St James, murder count nears 300
Published:Friday | November 24, 2017 | 12:00 AMAdrian Frater
WESTERN BUREAU:
The ongoing murder mayhem in St James claimed another three lives and left several persons nursing gunshot wounds as gun-toting thugs struck in three separate locations on Thursday afternoon into early Friday morning.
In the first incident, which occurred shortly after 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, a woman and her baby were attacked along Felicity Road, also called Blood Lane, in Glendevon, by men who alighted from a motor car and opened fire on them.
In the second incident, which occurred at approximately 8:30 p.m., in Mud Valley, Granville, one man was shot dead and four others injured as men alighted from a motor car and opened sustained gunfire on them. The man who was killed was identified as 32-year-old Kemoy Malcolm of Mud Valley.
In the third and most brutal of the three incidents, 52-year-old chef Leroy Salmon and his common-law wife, Ella Daley, were ambushed by gunmen in Blue Hole shortly after 5 a.m. and slaughtered in the van in which they were travelling.
BABY COVERED IN BLOOD
In the incident in Glendevon, residents say that the 21-year-old woman was walking along the main road with her 11-month-old baby when a car pulled up alongside her and men alighted and started shooting. Both the mother and child were hit. The car subsequently sped away.
"At lot of persons rushed to her assistance as both were covered in blood," said a resident. "They were rushed to the Cornwall Regional Hospital, and thankfully, both survived. We have been having a lot of shooting in the area in recent weeks."
Over in Granville, Malcolm and the other four men were at a shop when a car pulled up and several men alighted, firing guns. All five were hit, but Malcolm did not survive his injuries. The others are now nursing bullet wounds in hospital.
In the Blue Hole incident, Salmon and Daley were heading out on a business trip. While travelling along the pothole-riddled main road, men alighted from among bushes and shot up the vehicle, which got out of control and crashed along the side of the road. The shooters reportedly searched the van and the two bodies before making off with an undetermined sum of money.
When residents finally made it to the scene, they discovered the blood-soaked bodies of the couple, who, appeared to have suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
The latest murders have lifted the murder count in St James to 290 since the start of the year, which makes 2017 the bloodiest year in the parish's history. Last year, the parish recorded 264 murders, which was then the record.