This woman was among the angry residents of Mountain View Avenue in east Kingston who protested yesterday. - RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
UNCERTAINTY SURROUNDS the death of a 24-year-old Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), private, Twain Barnes, who was shot and killed in the vicinity of 99 Lane along Mountain View Avenue in east Kingston yesterday morning.
The Constabulary Communication Network (CCN) reports that Barnes was a member of a joint police/military patrol in the area when gunshots were heard. Barnes was later discovered with a bullet wound to the neck. He was pronounced dead at the Kingston Public Hospital.
Police investigators are now trying to ascertain exactly what transpired. Residents said they heard about three shots being fired in the area shortly after 2:00 a.m.
DENOUNCED ALLEGATIONS
The residents, who mounted a roadblock along Mountain View Avenue yesterday morning, have denounced allegations that the soldier was shot and killed by gunmen. They claimed that there was no shoot out and that the soldier might have been killed by "friendly fire".
Head of the Bureau of Special Investigations (BSI), Acting Assistant Commissioner Granville Gause, who is leading the investigation, said the weapons of the other members of the security forces who were on the patrol were seized for testing.
"We are in the process of conducting ballistics tests," said ACP Gause.
He said members of the patrol will be swabbed and dates have been scheduled to conduct interviews with the personnel who were on the patrol at the time Barnes was killed.
Private Barnes became the 14th person to have been shot in the Mountain View area since last Friday. He is the second one to have died.
A graduate of Dinthill High School, Private Barnes enlisted in the JDF in April, 2003.
A release from the JDF said he was a rifleman in the first Battalion, The Jamaica Regiment (1JR). He was born in Crofts Hill, Clarendon. While attending school he was a cadet and a prefect.
Members of the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) met with the area leaders in the troubled Mountain View community earlier this week to help find a solution to the long-running gang feud there.
Bishop Herro Blair of the PMI told The Gleaner on Wednesday that a PMI team visited sections of Mountain View on Monday and spoke to several persons who have been affected by the violence. He said the parties agreed that dialogue would be the best way to cool tempers.
