Glenroy Sinclair, Staff Reporter
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson (left) is greeted by a black flag (a sign of mourning) as he arrived at the Cross Roads Police Station in St. Andrew, yesterday. A district constable was shot and killed at the station Wednesday morning as officers on duty came under heavy fire from gunmen who had gone on a rampage across the Corporate Area. Three policemen, including an inspector, were killed in what the police say are related incidents. - RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
ONE OF the guns taken from the men who murdered Corporal Chandler Hewitt in St. Andrew Tuesday night is the same weapon used to kill Senior Superintendent Lloyd McDonald 14 months ago, the police disclosed yesterday.
Results of forensic investigations have also confirmed that the other firearm, taken from the bodies of two gunmen Tuesday night, is the service pistol stolen from the car being driven by Senior Superintendent McDonald after he was murdered on February 20 last year.
Ironically, McDonald was gunned down about 100 metres from where Corporal Hewitt was murdered three days ago. McDonald was driving a marked police vehicle when he came under gunfire from two men on a motorcycle at the intersection of Waterloo and Devon roads, St. Andrew, in February 2004.
In the case of McDonald, one man, identified as Ian Scott, was arrested by the police in connection with his murder. The matter is still before the courts.
Corporal Hewitt was also driving a marked service vehicle when he, too, was attacked by two men on a motorcycle, this time at the intersection of Waterloo Road and West Kings House Road, Tuesday night. The corporal's killers, Christopher St. Aubyn Coke, 23, and an unidentified man, were cut down by policemen who responded to Corporal Hewitt's cry for help.
CLAMPING DOWN ON DELINQUENT MOTORCYCLISTS
Deputy Commissioner of Police Mark Shields, the British officer who is on secondment from Scotland Yard, said that the police force will be clamping down on delinquent motorcyclists.
"Our focus will be on the criminal use of bikes but this will mean that people will have to obey the law. They will have to have insurance documents, they will have to have driving licences and most of all they will wear crash helmets," he told The Gleaner Wednesday. "If they don't wear crash helmets they will be issued with tickets and if their bikes are not roadworthy they will be taken away from them."
While Christopher Coke's address has been given as Acadia, Kingston 8, Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas said both men involved in Tuesday's murder of Corporal Chandler have West Kingston connections. The Gleaner was told that the police are to question some of Coke's relatives. Coke is the son of the late Tivoli Gardens enforcer, Lester Lloyd Coke, alias 'Jim Brown', who perished in a mystery fire at the Tower Street maximum security prison on February 23, 1991.
Meanwhile, the police have said that their investigations indicate that the killing of the three policemen and two security guards between Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, is linked to the death of a prominent West Kingston don, Devon Orville Griffiths, alias 'Zion Train'.
