Man charged for hacking 61-year-old woman to death

Fifty-five-year-old farmer, Dwayne Richards of Crooked River in Clarendon has been charged with the February 15 murder of 61-year-old Sharon Cole of McDonald District, also in Crooked River.
 
The police report that the incident happened about 5:10 p.m., when Richards went to a grocery shop where he saw Cole and asked her to buy him a drink. She obliged.

He told her thanks and she did not answer. It is reported that he then grabbed her and pulled her outside the shop and used a machete he had waiting by the door to chop her all over her body, severing her left hand in the process.

Richards was subsequently arrested at the home of a relative in Kingston and later charged.

A witness to Cole's murder told The Gleaner that the news brings a sense of security to the community. 

"We feel safe now, because even after the police say them ketch him we did still 'fraid, and nobody never want to talk up," the witness said, adding that residents had long harboured fear of the man they call 'Snake.'

Meanwhile, an angry councillor for the Kellits division, Noel Nembhard, minced no words in expressing his pleasure that the accused man was apprehended and charged, and went even further to say that heinous crimes, such as this one, should warrant capital punishment. 

"When you are sure that a person is 100 per cent guilty,  he should be hanged.  He should be in no prison eating tax payers' money. Even the family of that gentleman feels the same way," said Nembhard. 

Richards' court date is being finalised.

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