Gunmen unleash terror with Bull Bay double murder

When gunshots rang out on Friday night, Doreen Jackson-Smikle began gathering her family members, frightened by the unknown of what was occurring beyond the walls of her residence in Pleasant View, Eight Miles.

But when she called out to her 50-year-old husband, Lennox ‘Zaggy’ Smikle, a carpenter of Evans Lane in the Bull Bay, St Andrew, community, there was no response.

The only relatives present were her 37-year-old daughter, Tafina Thomas, her two grandsons, other small children, and her stepdaughter.

Smikle, the family breadwinner, had last been seen drinking soup on the verandah.

But as Jackson-Smikle stared off into the darkness, calling for her husband’s return, she saw men attempting to pull the locks off her front gate.

It was then that three men invaded her home with high-powered guns.

“Mi run fi lock the door, [but] me couldn’t lock di door because dem reach pon the veranda already,” she exclaimed.

Jackson-Smikle said she shouted to Thomas to run for her life. But by then, it was too late.

Her stepdaughter, she said, ran to take cover with the young children in the house under the bed and covered their mouths to muffle any sounds they might make.

The matriarch said that as she and her daughter’s boyfriend lay flat on the floor, a shot was fired, and through a space at the bottom of the door, they saw Thomas’ body on the floor.

“When me run out, me go outa door and me see Lennox a ground out deh so. Dem lick out Lennox [brain] marrow a ground,” a grief-stricken Jackson-Smikle said.

The couple was married for 18 years.

Jackson-Smikle told The Gleaner that her husband was no troublemaker.

The police information arm reported that Smikle was killed by gunmen approximately 9:36 p.m. along Rasta Lane in the community. He sustained gunshot wounds to the upper body.

Smikle was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital while Thomas succumbed to her injuries.

Jackson-Smikle said she is scarred by the gruesome images of the bodies of her husband and her daughter bleeding out on the ground.

The mother had prepared herself to attend church Sunday morning but said that she had to return home because she was not emotionally strong enough.

She believes that the motive for the attack was a long-standing dispute lasting more than three years.

Just last Tuesday, the family received a threat.

“Dem di wah kill Tafina long time. A nuh now dem did wah kill Tafina,” she said of her daughter, who was a shop operator.

She also harbours regret for not taking the matter more seriously.

Jackson-Smikle disclosed that a cell phone and laptop were also stolen from the home.

She admitted that she was unsure about how she would manage without her spouse and daughter, who were always around.

The Kingston Eastern Police Division continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the killing.

Detectives are urging anyone with information to contact them at 876-928-4200, Crime Stop at 311, or the police 119 emergency number.

Pleasant View is not unfamiliar with violent crime. The eastern Jamaica community was jolted by a triple murder in June.

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.

Murders have soared nationally by 5.8 per cent to 1,018 as at September 1, fifty-six more than for the corresponding period in 2021.

That is even though shootings have fallen by almost the same pace, 5.7 per cent.

Murders in the Kingston Eastern Police Division have plunged 39 per cent year-on-year, from 62 to 38 up to September 1.