Runaway teen a victim in St James double homicide

A HEARTBROKEN Albert Reid struggled to recognise the lifeless body of his runaway 15-year-old daughter, Toni-Ann, after she and a man were slain by gunmen as they slept in bed in Roehampton, St James, yesterday morning.

The other victim, 25-year-old Oshane Spence, otherwise called ‘Private’, is said to have been her boyfriend.

Reports are that shortly after 2:30 a.m., Toni-Ann and Spence were at home in a section of the community called Holiday Rock when men armed with high-powered guns kicked open a back door. The men then entered the room and sprayed both victims with bullets, killing them on the spot.

According to Reid, Toni-Ann ran away from his house in another section of the community last year. Despite filing a report with the police, he was unsuccessful in locating her.

He said that he had pleaded with Toni-Ann via telephone to return home and last heard from her before Christmas, when she promised to visit her family.

“It so painful. It hurts to know seh is my daughter who mi a call for many months. Mi a beg him (Toni-Ann) to come home and him not coming home,” the grieving father said.

Yesterday, he got the dreadful news.

“Mi couldn’t even recognise my own daughter, how she change up herself, how she bleach out and him get slim,” he said of the St James High School student, noting that she would have turned 16 next month.

Reid said that he thought his daughter had run away to another community, not knowing that she was actually living nearby with a man considered to be a troublemaker.

“Me can’t believe seh me come find my own daughter dead right yah so. Me a pass my daughter for weeks and months and never know say a she because she change up herself and she see me and hide (from) me,” said the father, who bemoaned her tragic passing after all he had done for his three children, who he said their mother left solely in his care when they were infants.

“It hurt me to know say mi comb my daughter hair (and) send her go to school. As a man, me take up that deh responsibility, and now to come find my daughter dead in a bed with man that me talk to her bout, and him (Toni-Ann) nuh ready fi man yet cause him a just 15,” Reid said, adding that he had previously warned her of her association with Spence.

Investigators told The Gleaner that Spence, who had been under the police radar for some time, was questioned on numerous occasions in relation to crimes in the community.

“It is safe to say that he is one of those violence producers, who at one time was even suspected in a case of shooting at police officers,” a police investigator said.

No motive has yet been established for the double murder, which comes on the heels of a triple homicide in the parish on Monday night and another killing on Tuesday.

St James has recorded at least nine murders since the start of the year.