Cop: Gangster killed in shootout a high-value target
Published:Tuesday | June 25, 2024 | 12:08 AMAdrian Frater/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
One of the two men killed in a near-one-hour gun battle with the security forces in Rose Heights, St James, last Friday night is alleged to have been a high-value target with ties to gangsters in the United States of America.
While residents of the community have identified the deceased man as ‘Wayne’, the police have not officially released his name, albeit admitting that he is top-tier gangster aligned with Jamaican gangsters based in Miami, Florida.
“His background is being extensively investigated as we believe what we learn could give us an insight into gang operations here and there overseas,” a lawman, who is not authorised to speak on operational matters, told The Gleaner.
Reports are that shortly after 9:40 p.m. on Friday, residents on Sean Crescent, off 41 Boulevard in Rose Heights, were sent scampering when gangsters surprised a police-military patrol team, which had entered the community, and engaged them in a blazing gun battle that lasted more than 45 minutes.
“We responded and returned the fire, and they continued to challenge us, firing from rooftops, trees, and neighbouring premises,” said Deputy Superintendent Linroy Edwards, the operations officer for St James.
Edwards noted that two men were found suffering from gunshot wounds and two illegal firearms seized in the aftermath of the shooting.
One resident told The Gleaner that she slid under her bed when the shooting started and remained there, praying, until the shooting ended.
The resident said the incident evoked memories of the infamous 2003 gun battle in Canterbury, also in St James, where gangsters had engaged the security forces in an eight-hour gun battle before they were subdued.
“It was like reliving Canterbury again ... . Nuff gunshots and yuh fearful that you might not make it out alive,” the woman said. “People cannot live like this ... . The children are traumatised; too many shootings and killings; too much bloodshed.”
Before last week’s launch of Operation Storm, the latest policing initiative to apprehend gangsters and seize illegal guns, Superintendent Eron Samuels, the police commander for St James, urged wanted men in the parish to turn themselves in peacefully and not to engage the security forces in gunfights.
“We would prefer to have these men surrender peacefully,” Samuels said then, noting that gangsters will not be allowed to operate with impunity in any community in the parish to the detriment of law-abiding citizens.
Last week, two men who were listed on the St James police’s most wanted list surrendered without incident and are now in custody. They have been identified as Derron ‘Man a 40’ Reid and Austin ‘Akeem’ Reid. They were implicated in a murder committed in Sunderland district, also in St James, on July 3, 2023.
Like their counterparts in St James, the Westmoreland police also enjoyed some success last week. Tevin ‘Shawn Storm’ Robinson, who was implicated in last Wednesday morning’s double murder of 56-year-old vendor Marlene Hall and her husband Kirk Hall, who were shot dead at their Jamba Hill home, near Whithorn, and their house set ablaze with the bodies inside, was killed a few hours later in an alleged confrontation with the police.
“Robinson and another man engaged the police in a running gun battle in the Bluefields police area and both of them were killed,” said Superintendent Othneil Dobson, the police commander for Westmoreland.