Police yesterday identified a woman who was found at North Parade in downtown Kingston on Saturday as a member of the Island Special Constabulary Force and one of four persons murdered by gunmen in the Corporate Area over the weekend.

They named the policewoman as 41-year-old Cynthia Patterson, who was stationed at Harman Barracks.
The other murdered persons are bus driver Everton Salky, of Connolly Avenue in Kingston; and 63-year-old Veronica Ellis and her grandson, Sheldon Williams, 15, both of Keino Pathway in Payne Land in Kingston.

The police say Patterson was found with gunshot wounds after cops patrolling the area heard explosions and went to investigate shortly after 5:00 in the morning. She was taken to hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Yesterday, as news of the fallen officer surfaced, several of her colleagues questioned the circumstances under which she was cut down.

According to an officer at the Constabulary Communication Network, the incident has raised some eyebrows among the police, and only a detailed investigation could answer the string of questions that follow her demise.

"It is really an interesting matter, though, because this happened so early in the morning and the location where the incident occurred is another thing. It leaves us to wonder what she was doing in downtown at that time of the morning," the officer said.

The officer investigating Patterson's murder was said not to be at work yesterday when the Observer tried to get a comment on the killing.

Patterson, who was assigned to the Supreme Court, was clad in a white sleeveless blouse, blue jeans skirt and a pair of red slippers when she was shot. She had no form of identification on her at the time of the incident.
Her death brings to three the number of cops murdered since the start of the year.

Meanwhile, the Kingston Central police say they are searching for two of three men who held up and robbed a bus before murdering the driver, Everton Salky, at the entrance to the station on Saturday.

Salky, cops say, was shot in the head as he tried to drive the bus, registered 4869 EF, onto the compound as it was being robbed.

The police report that shortly after 9:00 pm the men boarded the bus as it travelled the Papine to downtown route and robbed several passengers of their cell phones and an undetermined sum of cash. The cops say Salky, in an effort to foil the robbery, turned into the police station but was shot by one of the robbers.

Officers at the station, upon hearing the explosions, rushed toward the scene where one of the robbers was held. The other two, police say, escaped along East Queen Street. Salky succumbed to his injuries at hospital, the cops say.

Meanwhile, residents of the volatile community of Payne Land are alleging that Saturday's murders of Veronica Ellis and her grandson are reprisals for a shooting incident in the community last week.

According to a resident, Ellis was the mother of a man who is said to be involved in an ongoing turf war between men from an area known as Delacree Lane and another section called Top Road in the community.

The resident said Ellis' son was among a group of men who crept up and opened fire on men from another section of the area.

"Is reprisal why them shoot her. Her son go shoot up man from Top Road and is come them come back for him and shoot she and the youth," one resident told the Observer. "Them boy there don't have anything to live for so they can just come in and shoot up anybody and do anything."
Several persons, the Observer was told, have fled the area because of the shootings.

Police say the double murder occurred shortly after 3:00 pm close to Ellis' home.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World