Adrian Frater, News EditorWESTERN BUREAU:
THE MONTEGO Bay police have detained a suspect in connection with Wednesday's brutal gangland-style killing of a radiator repairman along Creek Street, in the western city.
"We have detained a suspect a few hours after the killing and he is now being questioned," said Assistant Superintendent of Police Dave Hyman of the St. James Operations unit. "We are not yet in a position to say whether or not he will be charged."
SIXTEENTH MURDER VICTIM
The dead man, the sixteenth person to be murdered in St. James since the start of the year, has been identified as 26-year-old Orville Roberts of a Beeston Spring address in Westmoreland. He was killed in front of the business place he operated at 27 Creek Street.
According to reports, Mr. Roberts was repairing a radiator when a man walked up behind him, brandished a handgun and fired a single shot into the side of his face. The bullet, which blew away a part of his face, exited at the back of his head.
Preliminary investigations are that Mr. Roberts was involved in a bitter quarrel with another man on Tuesday night and it is being speculated that his death may have been a result of that incident.
"Regardless of what happened, he (Mr. Roberts) did not deserve to die like that," said a man, who operates a business in close proximity to that of the deceased. "He was a young man who I admired very much. He was a man who was always working; he was not one who was given to idling."
According to persons who witnessed the incident, after the killer fired the fatal bullet, he merely walked away, leaving Mr. Roberts in a pool of blood and his co-workers in awe.
