BLOODY TUESDAY
At least 18 shot, 7 fatally, as bullets rain
Published:Thursday | May 23, 2024 | 12:11 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
A wave of horror and bloodshed moved across Jamaica on Tuesday as a series of shootings unfurled, leaving at least seven people dead and 11 injured.
The deadly incidents unfolded in several police divisions in a string of separate incidents.
Fatalities were recorded from shooting incidents in the St Andrew North, Kingston Central, St Andrew South, St Andrew Central, Kingston Western, Kingston Eastern, and Hanover police divisions.
Among the fatalities was Gleaner journalist Job Nelson, a veteran in the field for more than three decades who lived in Temple Hall, St Andrew.
Nelson took his last breath in the hands of strangers, who rushed to his assistance along Collie Smith Drive in St Andrew after his Honda motor car crashed into a utility pole.
Commander for the Kingston Western Police Division, Senior Superintendent Micheal Phipps, said Nelson had stopped at a traffic light along Spanish Town Road when a car drove up beside his vehicle and the occupants fired on him about 10:30 p.m.
Investigators surmise that Nelson, 53, was attempting to drive himself to hospital afterwards, but the vehicle crashed along the nearby Collie Smith Drive.
On Wednesday, a resident of the area known as ‘Tiler’ said he was one of the first persons on the scene after the vehicle crashed. He recalled seeing the driver, who was the single occupant of the vehicle, bleeding profusely.
“We a play pool and hear blum (crash sound)! We run come out and see the car in a di light post. When we fly the car door, him (Nelson) pull off the seatbelt and come out the car, and when him a go across the road, him a go down (stumble), and so we hold him up and put him a di container to sit down, and then him just go down,” Tiler told The Gleaner.
He said a patron at a nearby bar quickly rendered assistance and drove the unresponsive media practitioner to the Kingston Public Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
When The Gleaner visited the scene on Wednesday, residents were cleaning the bloodstained area where Nelson reportedly took his last breath.
Some residents reported hearing a single gunshot along Spanish Town Road before Nelson crashed on the nearby Collie Smith Drive.
The residents said that without knowing who the injured Nelson was, they were anxious to get him help, but it was too late.
“We never know him ‘cause we never see any ID. We just think is an elderly man crash, and we just stop what we doing and a help a stranger,” a resident said.
Earlier in the day, taxi operator Kemar Minott was fatally shot along Mountain View Avenue in St Andrew.
A security guard was also found murdered in Olympic Gardens, St Andrew. His identity could not be ascertained up to press time last night.
Just before midnight, a mass shooting shattered the calm along Shortwood Road in St Andrew as four women and five men were shot after men opened fire on patrons at a bar. Forty-five-year-old Farrah ‘Kimmy’ Anderson of a Grants Pen Avenue address was killed in the incident.