40 year old Rodney Joseph, a man who was accused of regularly sexually assaulting and beating his 80 year old mother, was reportedly shot and killed by the police at his home at Top Hill, St. Elizabeth yesterday.
According to reports, early yesterday morning, a police team went to Joseph’s house, and tried to convince him to exit the house peacefully. It’s alleged that Joseph subsequently rushed from inside the house with a knife in his hand and stabbed at a policeman. Another policeman reportedly fired three shots at the knife-wielding man, hitting him in the side and shoulder. Joseph was rushed to the Black River Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The daggering dance style that’s popular in the dancehall, was reportedly the source of a feud which led to an 18 year old man’s death in Portland on Sunday (August 22). According to reports, Daniel Blair of Windsor in Portland, was at a dance at Rivers View, Rio Grande Valley in the parish in the early hours of Sunday morning, when a dispute developed between himself and another man. It is reported that the dispute had been ongoing, but took a turn for the worse on Sunday because one of the men was seen ‘daggering’ a female said to be a close friend of the other.
A knife was reportedly brought into play, and Blair was stabbed in the right side of his chest. He was later pronounced dead at the Port Antonio hospital. His 20-year-old assailant, who was taken into custody, is expected to be charged soon.
The police have indicated that a gang feud between men from sections of Olympic Gardens known as ‘Back Road’ and Tower Avenue was the reason behind yesterday’s murder of eight year old Jodian Bignal at Mahagony Road in Olympic Gardens. Reports indicate that Bignal, a student of the Seaward Primary and Junior High School, was at home at approximately 2:40 a.m., when four gunmen broke open a window to the house and opened fire hitting her. She was taken to hospital, but died while undergoing treatment.
Police personnel and mourners who were in attendance at yesterday’s funeral for alleged gangster, Andre Smellie, were reportedly forced to take cover, as the man’s cronies reportedly fired numerous shots into the air in close proximity to the where the service was being held on Tavern Drive in Papine, St. Andrew.
Smellie, who was allegedly a key member of the Dog Paw gang, was shot and killed last month by the police during an alleged shoot out. Police personnel who were on hand at yesterday’s funeral, called immediately for reinforcements, but by the time they arrived, the shooting had ended, and no one of interest was held.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers working at the DHL express consignment operation in Cincinnati, seized more than 52 pounds (22 kilograms) of marijuana last week. The drug was hidden inside a tombstone which was being shipped from Kingston, Jamaica to London, England.
According to reports, officers conducting enforcement operations became suspicious of the item, and a narcotics detection dog alerted aggressively to the parcel. An x-ray examination of the item revealed anomalies, and several packages of marijuana were subsequently found concealed within a metal box which was wrapped in metal mesh and hidden inside the concrete tombstone. The street value of the marijuana is approximately US$52,000.
The tombstone (picture below), bears the name of 35-year-old Delroy Senior. Part of its inscription reads, “your place no one can fill.”
The police are warning motorists to be on the look out for persons who continue the practice of hitting the vehicles of other motorists, then robbing them of their possessions (and/or vehicle) when they stop to assess the damage.
In one recent incident, a taxi traveling from Spanish Town to Linstead was hit from behind at around 10 in the night. When the driver stopped and alighted from the vehicle, two men who were traveling in the car that hit them pulled guns and robbed the occupants of the taxi of cash, jewellery and cellphones.
The police are warning all motorists to be careful where they stop if they’re involved in an accident. Motorists are advised to drive to a safe location (e.g. a police station) to handle the matter. They’ve noted that incidents involving these deliberate “accidents” are frequent, and therefore persons should not stop if they are hit while driving in secluded areas. Motorists are advised to be observant and use their mirrors frequently to be aware of who is behind them and for how long. The crash robber practice has also become popular at traffic lights.
Cedric ‘Doggie’ Murray, who had been on Jamaica’s top 10 most wanted fugitives list for more than seven years, was shot dead at approximately 7:30 a.m. near the border of Clarendon and Manchester during an alleged gun battle with the police. A Cigpro 9mm pistol was reportedly taken from Murray’s body, along with a diary which detailed much of his criminal activities.
Here are some extracts from Murray’s gangster diary:
“May 24, Babylon — the enemy — invaded Tivoli Gardens, gunshots rang out for hours from every corner of West Kingston and other places of Kingston to protect the man, the don of all dons, Christopher Coke aka ‘Dudus’.”
“My don is free; I will always say Jim Brown. I am loyal to the Coke family and my guns will always be ready. I may never see my don again — maybe years to come — but he knows that I will always be there for him.”
“Babylon feel seh man a fool like dem. Dem feel seh dem can just come an’ kill mi. Dem better know seh mi a gangster fi life, all out when we get drawn out, straight bullet fi dem. My gun is my best friend, we are always together, always.”
“I fired my AK until my finger was numb. I eat gunpowder until my throat was sore.”
Hugh Tate appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court yesterday, where he was found guilty of being cruel to an animal, after he viciously attacked a dog and chopped it 36 times in the head, after which he used a large stone to hit it in the head, causing its death.
The court heard that Tate is the brother of the landlord of the owner of the dog, and that Tate had been abusing her dogs ever since they had an altercation where she stabbed Tate after he had headbutted her. The complainant said that Tate had fled to the country after the dispute, but whenever he came to visit his sibling (the landlord), he would hit the dogs. The complainant said that it occured so frequently that whenever the dogs saw him coming they would run away. She alleged that he had killed three of her dogs.
In court yesterday, Tate (who appeared very amused) denied the allegations, stating that he did not even own a knife or machete. He however admitted throwing a stone which he said hit the dog on its back. Tate is currently on station bail, and scheduled to be sentenced on August 3.
43 year old Radcliffe Plummer of a Trelawny address, appeared in the Trelawny Resident Magistrate’s Court at Ulster Spring yesterday, where he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, after he was convicted of praedial larceny. Notably, as the Resident Magistrate was handing down the sentence, she reportedly told Plummer “By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, not the sweat of another man’s brow.”
The court heard that at about 5:30 pm on May 19, the complainant, Vinton Gordon, went to his yam field at Durham in Trelawny where he saw Plummer digging his yams. Gordon reportedly observed Plummer (whom he knew for many years) for 15 minutes before calling the police. Plummer was held with the stick and machete that he was using to reap the yams, and he was subsequently taken into custody and charged with praedial larceny of 165 pounds of yam.
Plummer entered a plea of guilty on his first appearance in court on July 27, adding that he had planned to compensate Gordon. On July 29, his relatives brought $50,000, which was given to Gordon. After receiving the money, Gordon asked the court for leniency on Plummer’s behalf. Judge Barnes said she was being as lenient as she could under the circumstances, as Plummer’s action was “unconscionable” in a society where everyone wanted to reap what they had not sown. He was given the 18 month sentence where the maximum sentence for the offence is three years.
Speaking earlier this week in Parliament, Minister of Transport and Works – Mike Henry – announced that there were numerous drivers on Jamaica’s roads who had accumulated hundreds of traffic tickets, most of which were unpaid. One specific offender, a bus driver, has reportedly accumulated more than 1,500 traffic tickets over a two year period, and tops the list of Jamaica’s traffic offenders.
According to a recent analysis of Jamaica’s traffic citation data, Henry said there were 11 persons with between 301 and 500 tickets, 55 persons with between 201 and 300 tickets, and 393 motorists with between 101 and 200 tickets. He said the current outstanding fines for traffic violations in Jamaica total over J$3 billion.
