By NAN Staff Writer
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. June 29, 2018: The death toll is astounding! Some 850 people have been murdered in just two Caribbean nations in the past 179 days, a News Americas analysis has revealed.
The NAN analysis was done on Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago based on recent statistics and murders reported by local media and from sparse police data in recent months. NAN found that for Jamaica alone, the number was close to 600.
Among those murdered in Jamaica were several overseas nationals including UK pensioners Charlie and Gayle Anderson, who were found hacked to death at their eight-bedroom home in Mount Pleasant in Hope Bay on June 22nd.
Others recent high-profile murder cases to make the international news include the May 2018 murder of UK citizen, 63-year-old Delroy Walker in St. Mary; the January murder of Canadian couple Melbourne Flake, 81, and Etta Flake, 70, in their home in St. Thomas as well as the murder the December 2017 murder of New York-born model Desiree Gibbon, 26, who was found in bushes along an isolated road in the town of Anchovy, several miles outside the tourist resort town of Montego Bay, remains unresolved.
So far this year, more than 600 people have been killed, according to the UK’s Sun newspaper. Just this month, a nine-year-old girl was killed in the Bronte community in Westmoreland while businessman Brandon Murray of Clarendon, was fatally shot by armed men at the Mayfair Hotel in St Andrew; prominent businessman and sub-contractor Keith Osbourne, 56, otherwise called ‘Smoker, was murdered in Palmers Cross last Thursday and construction workers Zephaniah Shaw and Benjamin Clark, both of Decoy Road in Tollgate, Clarendon, were also murdered Sunday night.
A state of emergency has also been imposed in St. Catherine parish, west of the capital of Kingston even as the country’s Minister of National Security, Dr Horace Chang, said the island overall has seen a 9.9 per cent reduction in homicides and a 25 per cent reduction in major crimes, compared to the same period last year.
Still Jamaica Star reports indicate that in a 15-day span this month, St James has recorded 10 murders, much to the chagrin of the security forces.
Jamaica has a murder rate of 54 per 100,000, according to Chang in a long-awaited crime plan demanded by the People’s National Party (PNP), promised by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and delivered late last week.
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO
Meanwhile, in the oil rich twin-island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the country’s murder rate is also creeping up to historic highs this year.
As many as 248 people were killed so far this year, according to T&T Crime.com with 240 as of June 7, 2018, according to updates from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service, (TTPS).
As a result, the private security industry is booming. There are more than 500 private security firms in the country, employing as many as 50,000 people even as local news reports indicate that over 6,000 nationals have applied for a fire arm license. Last week, a group of citizens staged a protest calling for greater anti-crime action from the government, lying on the pavement outside the entrance of the country’s Parliament.
