Triple murder rocks Georgia, St Thomas

The constant mooing of cows in the yard in which three people were murdered, captured the sombre mood that pervaded the usually peaceful community of Georgia in St Thomas, yesterday.

The victims were identified as 51-year-old farmer of Georgia David 'Bum Bum' Anderson; his spouse, 45-year-old Maurine Smith; and their daughter, Oddette.

It was sometime around daybreak on Saturday that the oldest son of Smith's four children decided to make one of his usual visits to his mother's house.

After calling out numerous times without an answer, he decided to go inside, where he saw all three lying in pools of blood.

Smith's 16-year-old daughter, Vanessa Muir, was among the group of people who gathered metres from the scene yesterday afternoon.

Struggling through tears, she told The Sunday Gleaner that it was her brother who had called her with the news.

"Mi big bredda go find dem and call mi other brother and him tell me," she said, adding that she had last seen her mother on Thursday evening.

According to police investigators, the killings occurred sometime between Thursday evening and Friday morning.

The police say that all three were found with wounds to the head. The two adults were on the floor of the one-bedroom house and the child on the bed.

As residents watched in silence while police investigators processed the scene, an uproar from a man who identified himself as Baldin Francis, owner of the land on which the house is located, rocked the gathering.

"A me put dem on the land cause it's mine, and this must be solved. I won't stop until we get to the bottom of it!" shouted Francis.

He alleged that the family had been victims of praedial larceny on numerous occasions.

St Thomas recorded 21 murders in 2017, with the number now at six since the start of this year.