Murder breakthrough - Police sources say UK returning resident killed in St Mary over botched paint job
Published:Thursday | May 24, 2018 | 12:00 AMLivern Barrett/Senior Gleaner Writer
Police investigators believe that an altercation over a botched paint job was what led to the deadly attack on an elderly returning resident in St Mary last month.
The St Mary police have now arrested and charged two men who they believe stabbed Delroy Walker, 63, multiple times in the upper body inside the dream home he purchased nine months ago in Rio Nuevo Resort, Tower Isle.
Dwayne Barton, 25, and Davian Edwards, 26, both unemployed of Stewart Town, have been charged with murder and are expected to appear in court next week. Both men have given statements about their roles in the killing, sources have revealed.
According to the sources, Barton was hired to paint several areas of the Rio Nuevo property that Walker called home after returning from the United Kingdom (UK) last year. The task was expected to take weeks, but Barton reportedly completed it "within days", triggering a verbal altercation with Walker about the quality of the work.
Amid the verbal confrontation, sources revealed, the elderly returning resident offered to pay Barton less than they had agreed and things "got physical".
"Days later, Barton and Edwards returned to Mr Walker's house and murdered the returning resident," one law enforcement source told The Gleaner. The police found Walker's body after they were alerted by residents who reported that they saw "a trail of blood" leading from his house shortly after 9 o'clock on the morning of April 19.
Walker was a beloved charity worker in the UK city of Birmingham, where his death attracted widespread media coverage. His brother, Steve Walker, told the BirminghamLive website that he and seven family members were allowed by investigators to view the crime scene and revealed that there were signs of what the news outlet described as a "life-and-death struggle".
Steve Walker said that his brother, who was a builder by profession, spent his final years in the UK as a school caretaker but wanted to return to the land of his birth to help others and the nation's struggling economy.