Man accused of killing homeless persons gunned down by police
Published:Saturday | November 13, 2021 | 12:05 AMAinsworth Morris/Staff Reporter
Marlon Roberts, the man accused of killing homeless persons in Kingston for years, was gunned down by the police last Friday.
Head of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) Corporate Communications Unit, Senior Superintendent Stephanie Lindsay told The Gleaner on Wednesday that Roberts died from injuries he sustained during a shooting incident with the police.
“It was reported that the police went in search of him in relation to the recent death of two homeless men in the Cross Roads area. Based on their investigation, they went to a particular location in search of him and, when they saw him, it is alleged that he attacked an officer with a knife and was shot and later died,” SSP Lindsay told The Gleaner.
She added, “As a matter of fact, I spoke with the investigators and, so far, there have been at least three deaths of homeless persons linked to Roberts, which goes back as far as 2017.”
Lindsay said Roberts was taken into custody on previous occasions for the deaths of individuals. It is alleged that stones were thrown on the deceased homeless person’s heads while they slept on the corridors of different spaces in the Corporate Area.
“He was taken into custody before. However, there wasn’t sufficient evidence to advance the trial, so he was released. He was last in custody in May of this year and released in August, and then we saw the deaths of homeless persons starting again,” she said.
Between January 23 and 25, four homeless men were killed in the streets of Kingston. One was killed on the outskirts of the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court, two were found on Hanover Street, and a fourth at Mother White Bridge.
Following these killings, the Government had put in place 150 beds at a homeless shelter in downtown Kingston.
Speaking with some homeless residents at the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation’s temporary night shelter located at Church Street on Tuesday, they were not happy with the death of the accused man.
Some told The Gleaner that they are scared for their lives.
Homeless woman, Serena Morgan, said the killing of Roberts “nuh feel right”.
“It just nuh feel right. It nuh look right,” she briefly told The Gleaner.
Morgan said she has been robbed numerous times in the last two years since she has been homeless. To protect herself at nights, she walks to the shelter in downtown each evening and waits for it to open and gets a bed to rest.
Another homeless person, Leroy Lindo, told The Gleaner that he does not know how to react to the killing of the man accused of killing homeless persons.
“Him just build up a strife and a deh so di killing come in. Mi nuh know wa fi seh because death a gwaan from before mi born. Yuh can’t stop murder, because you don’t have to do anything fi a man murder you,” he said.
Lindo said he became homeless not by choice, but because he had gotten old and cannot pay rent anymore.