Terror grips Sandy Bay
The people of Sandy Bay in Clarendon are terrified.
They say the once quiet community has been transformed into a battlefield. In the last two weeks, four persons have been killed, one man shot and injured and three houses torched. Families have fled the area.
The four dead persons do not include former People’s National Party councillor for May Pen, Everton Thomas and businesswoman Carla Maye, who were shot dead at a bar on the periphery of the community last Wednesday night. Police say the double murder is not connected to the violence presently plaguing Sandy Bay.
“As dog bark everybody gone under them bed,” one elderly man remarked during a meeting called with the residents by head of the Clarendon police, Superintendent Derrick ‘Cowboy’ Knight.
Another resident told the Observer that since the arson attacks, sections of the community have been without electricity.
“Me really ‘fraid, especially at night time. You can’t see nothing and you don’t know who inna the bush,” the woman said.
The scared residents are begging for a police post to be set up in the area.
“It’s been 17 years that we have written to the Ministry of National Security asking for a police post to be set up here,” Roy Cooke, a Sandy Bay resident who was shot and injured some years ago, said. “We lease land and identify a building, but all now nothing. Sandy Bay is a voice crying out in the wilderness.”
Sandy Bay is an impoverished community close to the border of Clarendon and St Catherine and is at least a 15-minute drive away from the May Pen Police Station, which serves the community.
The residents claim that gunmen, who have made their lives hell, have more than enough time to carry out their dastardly acts and escape before the police arrive. They also pointed to a number of escape routes accessible to the criminals.
But Knight informed the concerned residents that a police post was not the answer to the community’s crime problem.
“What is needed in Sandy Bay is a police presence, not a police post,” Knight said at a street meeting last week. “There are 17 stations in the parish.”
He, however, promised to look into the possibility of the police occupying a building that the residents have identified.
The last recorded murder in Sandy Bay was that of 22-year-old Shelton Brown, a labourer of the community. Police say they found Brown’s body last Wednesday in an advanced state of decomposition. A post-mortem conducted on Brown’s remains revealed that he died from lacerations to the brain as a result of blows from a blunt object.
Police do not believe Brown’s death is linked to the current conflict which has beset Sandy Bay.
Last week, gunmen shot and killed a man in the community then returned later that night and burnt his mother’s house to the ground. Residents in the area say the killing divided members of one family and since then all hell has broken loose.
The next day, gunmen shot two of the dead man’s brothers, killing one and seriously injuring the other before burning down the house of another female relative.
Gunmen also went to a nearby community called Rasta Corner and torched a house. No one was hurt in that incident, police say.
Since then, the police have been maintaining a strong presence in the area to quell the disturbance.
Two men, described by police as the main perpetrators, have since been taken into custody. According to Superintendent Knight, the police are looking for six other men in connection with multiple crimes which have been committed in Sandy Bay.
One of the men is known only by his alias, ‘Cee Cee’. Police say he is wanted for multiple murder and has been a thorn in the side of the law for years.
‘Cee Cee’, the cops say, is known to frequent the One Order gang stronghold of Ellerslie Pen and other areas in Spanish Town, St Catherine. He is wanted in connection with the murder of a father and son in Sandy Bay last October as well as a murder which took place in the area weeks ago.
Police say ‘Cee Cee’ is a member of the family at the heart of the conflict. “He comes into the area and carries [out] all kinds of acts which make the persons living here very fearful and uncomfortable,” Knight told the Observer.
Knight also chided the residents for shielding the gunmen who have been wreaking havoc.
“It is you who live here and have to face it,” Knight told residents during a street meeting. “If you don’t want to come to the station, call crime stop, King Fish or 911. The policing has to begin inside the community.”
Since the start of the year, 78 persons have been murdered in Clarendon. Most of the murders have been committed in the parish capital of May Pen, the site of a newly constructed, state-of-the-art police station.
In the wee hours of Friday morning, police were summoned to the district of Tread Light in the town after the body of 51 year-old Reline Rose was found lying face down on a dirt track. Police say he was shot several times all over his body.
Deputy Superintendent in charge of crime for the parish, Cleon March, says the high rate of murders in Clarendon is due to a number of factors.
“There are socio-economic factors and the guns for drugs trade is on,” he explained. “Guns are being supplied to the hopeless youths in the ghetto communities in the town. We also have information which suggests that extortion is on the rise.”
DSP March was also very concerned that criminal elements in the parish were forming partnerships with gunmen from outside the parish.
“We have a lot of itinerant criminals,” March said. “Our information is that they come from West Kingston, Olympic Gardens, Spanish Town and other areas.”
According to DSP March, the traditionally violent communities of Effortville, Farm Heights, Webb Lane and Palmer’s Cross have been quiet since the arrest of several suspected criminals.
He said the police were watching the communities of Canaan Heights and Bucknor, two of the tougher neighbourhoods in the parish capital.