Abduction ends with deaths of two men in Hellshire

A crime spree that started in Gregory Park, Portmore, Tuesday night, during which a man and a woman were abducted and forced to withdraw money from Corporate Area ATMs, ended yesterday along the Hellshire main road with the death of one of the gunmen and the male victim.

The man was shot by the gunmen and one of the gunmen shot by a police special operations team. The other man managed to escape while the female was unharmed.

The St Catherine South police say the male and female were abducted from their Gregory Park home at gunpoint and taken to the Corporate Area. where they were forced to used ATM cards to withdraw $100,000 from different accounts.

The gunmen then drove the couple back to Portmore where they took the male from the car, shot him, and dumped his body in mangroves along the Hellshire main road.

The police theorised that based on blood that was seen on the opposite side of the road that create a trail to the other side, the man could have been killed and his body dragged across the road and dumped into the crocodile infested mangrove on the other side.

A special operation team, which was tracking the vehicle in which the gunmen were travelling in on Wednesday, tried to apprehend the occupants, who took the police on a chase towards Fort Clarence Beach.

The vehicle reportedly crashed in the vicinity of Fort Clarence Beach, and the occupants alighted from the disabled car and engaged the special operations team in a running gun battle. One of the gunmen was shot while the other escaped into the nearby mangroves and was, up to early last night, still being sought by the police, with the aid of the Jamaica Defence Force.

Medical attention

Earle Grant, deputy superintendent of police in charge of operations, told The Gleaner that the police were trying to get immediate medical attention for the gunman with the hope that he could provide valuable intelligence.

“We took him to the Spanish Town Hospital with a view to saving his life because we needed more information on the gangs that are committing these types of crimes within Portmore and the Kingston Metropolitan Area,” said Grant.

According to him, no firearms were recovered, but they are continuing the search for the second gunman regardless of the time it might take.

Although there have been incidents where robbers forced persons to use ATM cards to get money before, Grant said it was too early to say whether this was a new trend in Portmore or the Corporate Area.