Wanted ‘Shortman’ captured just before fleeing to Haiti

WESTERN BUREAU:

Twenty-one-year-old Soniman ‘Shortman’ Walker, who was wanted by the St James police in connection with the murder of an American tourist, was captured in Clarendon last Wednesday by detectives attached to the Major Investigation Division (MID).

Walker was implicated in the March 4, 2020, murder of 65-year-old Theodore Walling, a retired quality-control inspector of East Dartmore Road, West Bloomfield Township in Michigan, in the United States.

Reports are that about 10 a.m., an employee at a popular guest house along Sunset Boulevard, in Montego Bay, where Walling was on vacation, went to his room and discovered him lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Investigators attached to the MID were summoned, and upon arrival, it was discovered that Walling had multiple stab wounds to the neck. His personal belongings were missing.

Following a review of a recording from the surveillance camera at the guest house, a male figure who matched the description of Walker was seen coming from Walling’s room.

The police were reportedly told that the accused man was seen in the company of the tourist prior to him being found dead.

A manhunt was launched for Walker, but the police came up empty-handed as persons who knew Walker well said he had fled the parish. Walker’s trail subsequently went cold.

However, after one year on the run, Walker’s luck ran out on Friday, May 14, when he was held at the Rocky Point Fishing Village in Clarendon during a police operation.

About 4 p.m. that day, a team of officers, acting on intelligence that men involved in the illicit drug trade were making final preparations to sail to Haiti, held Walker in an operation.

“This murder suspect has managed to elude the police on numerous occasions, but the hard-working detectives at MID never gave up, and it finally paid off for them with his capture,” a police officer told The Gleaner.

“The operation in Clarendon was carried out in the nick of time. Had the police waited a little longer, Shortman would have been smuggled out of the country via the guns-for-drugs criminal network.”