Bloody weekend

Four people, including a businessman, were left nursing serious gunshot or machete injuries sustained in separate incidents in St Andrew over the weekend.

Some residents are now living in fear as one of the attacks appears to stem from a long-standing feud.

Reports are that sometime Saturday night, gunmen posing as customers entered a food establishment along Parks Road in St Andrew and opened gunfire, hitting the joint owner of the entity while he was in the process of serving an order.

Another man, who The Gleaner gathered is from Barnett Retirement, another section of the community, was also shot and injured.

A resident told The Gleaner, “Dem pull up and ordered food, and when him start serve, dem just start shoot him up … up to Sunday they removed some of the bullets (fragments), and he will probably have surgery to get to the others. We are praying for the best.”

The resident said there has been a spate of shootings in and around sections of the Parks Road community.

“Yes, people in fear because you don’t know the minute nor the hour. The guns in the hands of the wrong people. You don’t have to do nobody nothing and get caught up in the foolishness,” the resident said.

The Gleaner understands that both injured men were rushed to separate hospitals, up to press time one was said to be stable while the other was critical.

GANG WAR

The Parks Road community has been going through a turbulent gang war stretching as far back as three years, police sources told The Gleaner.

This has resulted in deaths and several persons escaping with only minor to serious injuries that may affect them for a long time.

In the earlier incident, still on Saturday, the police are probing a double case of assault occasioning grievous bodily harm after two men seriously wounded each other during a dispute.

The incident has left the district of Mount Airy on edge.

Reports are that sometime Saturday afternoon, the men had an argument and sharp instruments were brought into play.

This reportedly resulted in one of the men suffering from a chop wound to the head and the other a stab wound to the upper body.

The police were summoned and had to cordon the roadway and scene-of-crime detectives began to comb the restricted area for clues.

The scene was bloody.

A resident told The Gleaner that one of the men was found with his head “almost severed”, and the other was found some metres away, bleeding profusely.

Both were transported to the hospital, where they remained up to late yesterday evening.

“This only a go leave tension inna di place, but I don’t too follow it up because it don’t response me. I just try to stay clear of the tension. We only hear them stab and chop up each other, but nobody seem to know what the dispute is about,” a farmer from the community said.

Up to March 2, the Jamaica Constabulary Force said the St Andrew North Division, where both incidents took place, had recorded a 25 per cent decline in shootings year on year.

There were six reported incidents when compared to eight for the similar period last year.

For the corresponding period in 2023, there were four reports of injured persons compared to five so far this year.

Murders in the division have seen a 20 per cent increase with six so far this year compared to five for the same period last year.

andre.williams@gleanerjm.com