BULL BAY SLAUGHTER

Just last month, Marva Vernon-Jackson celebrated her fifth wedding anniversary and was looking forward to many more years of bliss.

But her happily-ever-after was cut short after gunmen invaded Pleasant View Lane in Eight Miles, Bull Bay, Sunday morning and slaughtered three men, including her beloved husband.

Raymond Jackson, 54; his nephew-in-law, 29-year-old Orville Hermit, otherwise called ‘Mr Bean’; and Kevon Bonfield, 26, otherwise called ‘Killi Killi’, all labourers of the St Andrew community, were killed by gunmen along a roadway about 12:10 a.m., according to the police’s Corporate Communication Unit.

The triple murder was among a weekend of bloodshed, including a triple shooting in which a barber, Aubrey Myers, was killed along Windward Way in Kingston and the discovery of burnt remains, with a severed hand, on Lincoln Avenue in Arnett Gardens, St Andrew.

The islandwide trail of bodies is expected to top the agenda for Major General Antony Anderson, Jamaica’s police commissioner, when he hosts his monthly press briefing this Tuesday amid sky-rocketing murders that are running seven per cent higher than last year’s pace.

That is a reversal of fortunes from the 1.7 per cent increase announced in early May.

In the Bull Bay community also known as Rasta Lane, the grief-stricken widow, crying openly, said she had been asleep with her husband when he left the bed to have a smoke and went to buy a cigarette.

Her, nephew, Hermit, she recalled, said he, too, wanted a smoke and offered to accompany Jackson to a nearby bar.

“I never know it was the last time that I would see my husband alive,” she said.

After some time had passed and they had not returned, Marva said she walked down to the bar but returned home when she realised it was closed.

“… So mi come in back and stand up there, and when mi listen, a bare gunshots mi hear and mi belly whop mi two times and mi say, ‘Jesus Christ! A weh Earl deh?’” she said, referencing Raymond’s nickname.

Marva said she and another nephew went looking for the two men but did not see them down the lane and were told by a police officer to pray.

She is still reliving the shock she felt when she saw the three men lying on the ground.

The professed Christian, who described her husband as loving, said hours before the incident, she had a premonition but was oblivious at the time.

“Mi and him lie down and we did a talk about 9:30 and then mi just find miself a cry, and him a say nobada with that, man. Him say, ‘Kiss mi pon mi jaw’,” she recalled before they both fell asleep.

According to Marva, she and her husband had been planning to move out of the family home and leave the community.

Her sister, Alicia Vernon, was also in anguish as she grieved the loss of her son, Hermit.

She said she was home watching television when she heard the shots and enquired of her son, who she had seen earlier watching a movie on his mobile phone and was told he had gone on the road with her brother-in law.

According to her, she ran outside to find her sister crying and saying that she could not find her husband.

Alicia said she was speechless when she discovered that Hermit and Jackson had been killed.

“Him no inna no badness, so mi nuh know why dem shoot him up suh. A 18 shots mi hear say dem give him,” she said.

The third victim’s brother, Horace, said Bonfield had just finished selling jerk chicken and had carried in his things when one of the two men, who were his friends, requested a meal.

“He died with the foil paper in him hand, and one a dem dead with the chicken,” he said.

According to Horace, his brother was not a criminal.

In another incident, the Kingston Eastern police reported that Aubrey and two other men were playing cards along the street at 10 p.m. when a motorcycle with two men aboard approached them and opened fire on the trio. Aubrey was killed while the others are said to be in stable condition.

Aubrey’s father, Trevor, who was spotted near the crime scene, close to his son’s barber shop, was devastated by the tragedy.

“When mi mother die, mi never cry so much,” the elder Myers said.

“A whole night mi torment. Mi couldn’t sleep and mi rise from 4, and a 5 a.m. mi daughter call and say she have something bad to tell me,” he said.

He said his son wasn’t a troublemaker and was a very jovial person.

Commander for the Kingston East Police Division, Superintendent Tommie-Lee Chambers, said the police have no leads in either of the incidents within her geographic zone but indicated that the division has experienced a reduction in all major crimes.

She said she was surprised by the triple murder because there was no indication of a gang conflict brewing in the Eight Miles community.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com