'Mi heart a bleed'

Sharon Heslop-Royal struggled to hold back tears on Monday as she looked at her wedding photos taken two decades ago, hours after learning that her husband was one of two security guards killed at a China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) site in St Andrew Sunday night.

"He was a loving man," the grieving widow said as relatives and friends gathered at her Brown's Hall, St Catherine, home to console her.

"We have been married for 20 years, but we have been together for 40 years, so right now, it is like ... I can't manage without him," she said.

Lincoln Royal and a 22-year-old colleague, Brandon Tristan Small, of Horizon Park, St Catherine, were reportedly shot dead at an industrial complex at Ferry, near the St Catherine-St Andrew border along Mandela Highway. A third colleague escaped unhurt.

According to police reports, about 11 p.m., heavily armed men travelling in a grey motorcar entered the compound through the front gate and held up the guard at the security post.

They then went further on to the compound and opened gunfire, hitting Small.

The assailants then escaped in the motorcar in which they had arrived.

On Monday morning, the body of one of the guards was reportedly found in the trunk of a motorcar while the other was seen in bushes on the property with gunshot wounds.

The police said the third guard, whose radio and security vest were found Monday amid a frantic search for him, was eventually located physically unhurt and was being questioned.

The police added that the third guard, who reportedly said he fled the area during the attack, was not considered a suspect.

"He is OK. There was no harm to him, that we know, physical harm. I don't want to go into his account, but he is well and he is now being interviewed by the police to give his side of the story," Deputy Superintendent Colerdige Minto, the operations officer for the St Andrew South Police Division, said in a Nationwide News Network interview on Monday.

Royal's widow told The Gleaner that her husband, who would work at nights at the CHEC compound before taking up duties along the highway during the daytime, left home about 5 p.m. on Saturday for work and was to return home on Wednesday.

The couple's son, Romario Royal, was also grief-stricken.

"When I heard about it, my heart jumped, and I am still in disbelief that somebody really murdered my father. All now mi heart a bleed," he said. "He was a great father. I don't know how my mother is going to manage without him, as he was the person who brings happiness and togetherness to the home."

Marblet Murray said the death of her oldest brother was shocking.

"I was looking for him to leave us from natural cause. All now mi still a process the sadness. Mi weak," she said.

Residents of Brown's Hall who visited the family to share in their grief recalled that the selfless Royal, who they affectionately called 'Dog Rice' and 'Crucial', was a lover of animals.

"I lived with the family for years ... . He was strict, but a very loving person," Nadine Brown told The Gleaner.

The Major Investigation Division is probing the incident.

rasbert.turner@gleanerjm.com