NORMALITY HAS been restored at the Long Mountain housing development, near Beverly Hills, St. Andrew after gunmen invaded the site and fired a number of shots last Friday.
Checks by The Gleaner on Monday revealed that work on the housing development had resumed, after most of the workers fled the site Friday, as a result of the shooting. Security personnel at the site said that everyone turned up for work on Monday. The police are reportedly maintaining regular patrols in the area.
The shooting incident had reportedly been spurred by a row in which some persons from communities near the work site claimed that not enough people from the area were being given work.
Sergeant Paul Reynolds of the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN) said on Sunday that the shooting was caused by "men obviously fighting over work on the site."
There was an increase in the number of patrols around the worksite and surrounding communities, immediately following the incident. This resulted in the seizure of an Intratec-9 sub-machine gun and the detention of six men at Roxborough Avenue, off Mountain View Avenue, East Kingston, by members of the Special Anti-Crime Task Force.
A worker at the construction site told a Gleaner news team on Sunday that men from nearby communities were demanding that more residents from their area be given work.
The Gleaner was told that the invaders fired gunshots in the air for about 15 minutes before escaping into nearby bushes. The police were summoned and a search, which included the use of a Jamaica Defence Force helicopter, combed nearby bushes for several hours in a bid to locate them.
