Bullets&Blood

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• • gleanerjamaica • jamaicagleaner • BULLETS & BLOOD THE GLEANER, TUESDAY, JULY 5, 2016 D6
BRAGGING ABOUT the number of shots that
rang out in the direction of a speedily reversing
squad car, a young man, no older than 20,
described how heavily armed teenage gangsters
engaged the police in a blazing gun battle in
west Kingston.
One of the alleged gunmen, a 16-year-old, he said, later turned
up at hospital with gunshot wounds and was arrested.
In the troubled community of Tel Aviv, in central Kingston, it
was reported that a young man was taken out of a nine-night
(wake) and shot five times only because the thugs in the neigh-
bourhood believed that it was his cousin who had killed the man
whose nine-night he was attending.
“Police know say war a gwaan and the man nine-night a keep
and three police down the road and me only see three little boy
drape the man and pull him outside, them me hear the shot dem.
“But me notice say everybody hear the shot and nobody nah
run so me know everybody know what a gwaan. All the police
them no move. Then later me go look pon the man body and
hear say them couldn’t hold him cousin, so them hold him,” said
a resident.
“The war round yah so come in like the war in a Denham
Town and Tivoli, a pure little boy a buss some gun that bigger
than them. But them little boy yah no tek no talk because the
first thing them tell you a fi them gun and them a buss them own
a shot dem,” added the resident.
He noted that the nine-night continued until the wee hours of
the morning and it was not until the next day that an alarm was
made about the body that was dumped in a yard metres away.
“It would appear that it is not only the shottas (gunmen) who
have lost all idea about the value of life,” said one policeman as
he noted that at many murder scenes, instead of shedding tears,
family members are among those persons photographing/video-
recording the bodies or calling relatives and friends to relay the
graphic details.
“When people get killed nowadays, you hardly see anybody
crying … . People just come and pop out dem cellular and start
video the bodies to put on Facebook,” one female resident of an
inner-city community in St James told The Gleaner.
“Life is no longer sacred … . It is like we are all living in an
action movie.”
‘IT IS LIKE WE
ARE ALL LIVING
IN AN ACTION
MOVIE’
10,309
The number of persons
murdered in the eight-
year period between
2008 and 2015
A significant number of these murders would have been as a result of the gun.
FILE
In 2005, then Deputy Superintendent of Police Delroy Hewitt of the
Denham Town Police shows two shotguns recovered during a joint
police-military operation.
Guns and drugs
recovered in 2016.