‘He was the love of my life’

After three years of online courtship, Shamarah Pinnock thought she was destined to arrive in Jamaica on November 2 to spend time with her soulmate, Dameion Jarrett.

As fate would have it, that plan did not materialise as Jarrett was murdered on October 18 in Portmore, St Catherine, and his corpse thrown on to George Lee Boulevard from a moving vehicle around 8 p.m.

The duo met 13 years ago when Pinnock visited Jamaica on a girls’ trip, and Jarrett, who was their taxi driver at the time, captured her attention with his charm.

This week, they were set to meet again and visit a lawyer together with the hopes of paying to annul Jarrett’s marriage and solidify their relationship.

Beyond heartbroken at the tragic twist in their plans, Pinnock cancelled her flight to the island.

“Life happens. We would keep in contact with each other, and finally, when we came together three years ago, we said we were going to work on the long-distance relationship,” she told The Gleaner in a recent telephone interview.

“I finally had my ticket to see him and he was murdered … . Everything (courtship) was strictly phone – video chat, phone calls,” she added.

“I haven’t been to Jamaica since 13 years ago. I was actually on the phone with him right before the incident happened … . He was coming from Clarendon and he had just gotten home about 7:32 p.m., and for some reason, when he gets home, the phone started messing up, so I hung up and text him [saying], when you get back on the road – because he had just gone home to pick up something – call me or text, and the last text message went through at 7:47 p.m.,” she said.

Pinnock believes Jarrett was murdered at the gate of his house or en route from his house after being whisked away before being thrown out of the vehicle along the roadway.

“I don’t think he made it inside the house. I don’t even think he made it out of the car to open his grille. We are speculating everything happened in front of his yard and they tossed the body out after and took his vehicle,” she said.

Jarrett was shot once in the head.

According to a cousin of the deceased, the body was found close to where Jarrett lived.

That cousin, who found out what happened after calling Jarrett’s phone and a police officer answered, was the one who informed Pinnock of the death.

“He is originally from Highgate, St Mary. He was living in Portmore just to be close to his daughter, and he used to work at Virginia Dare [Jamaica Limited] that delivers goods to bakeries and grocery stores,” Pinnock explained, describing Jarrett as humble, easy-going, spiritual, and pleasant.

“He wouldn’t complain although he could have the worst day ever. He recently lost the job at Virginia Dare. They merged the company, laid [him] off. He was a truck driver,” Pinnock said.

She said that Jarrett was unable to find another stable job and started working on construction sites near Clarendon. The site he was recently contracted to was shut down after an incident about a month ago.

A colleague from that site was also murdered and Jarrett was returning home after going to Clarendon to pay his respects, when he, too, was killed.

It remains unclear whether the murders are connected.

On Tuesday, the body of another man, who has remained unidentified, was also thrown from a moving vehicle along George Lee Boulevard in Portmore. It is reported that the body had blood coming from the head.

As Pinnock grapples with moving on, she rues the fact that the pandemic set in at the time she and Jarrett decided to establish a relationship, making the distance even more intense as travel restrictions and other life demands kept them apart.

“It was always the plan for us to get married, but when he was younger, at 17 [years of age], he had gotten married. [We were] trying to get the paperwork together. The young lady who he married was supposed to annul the marriage, but she never got the marriage annulled, so it was always a battle to get a divorce,” Pinnock said.

She disclosed that their last conversation was about plans for her visit to Jamaica and to formalise the end of that union.

“He was the love of my life. No matter how far he was, he still felt as if he was right here next to me, and if I was having a bad day, I would call him and he would make it okay,” Pinnock told The Gleaner.

“I would hear from him first thing in the morning. He would talk to me on my way to work. We would talk throughout the day, check in with each other, have conversations, and he was the last person I spoke to at night-time,” said Pinnock, who reached out to The Gleaner to humanise Pinnock amid the tragedy, noting that he was not just a man found lying on the street.

“He was a father. He was a brother. He lost his mother when he was seven, so his two sisters raised him. He had a rough, rough life, and finally, when he saw the light at the end of the tunnel, this happened,” she said.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com