SEVEN PERSONS, including a 77-year-old woman, were murdered in the island in separate incidents this past weekend, pushing the murder toll to 843 persons killed since the start of the year.
An elderly woman, Cyrine Miller, 77, of Cornwall district near Maggotty in St. Elizabeth, was found dead on Saturday afternoon. It is suspected that she was stabbed to death in the Breadnut Valley district at 4:15 p.m. She was found with her throat slashed, and stab wounds to the back and neck. She was not robbed as the groceries she was carrying were still at the scene of the crime.
Two men were shot dead and another man shot and injured by gunmen in St. Elizabeth on Saturday night. The dead men have been identified as 27-year-old Paul Sherman of Mitcham district, Goshen in the parish and 19-year-old Fitzroy Edwards from Spanish Town, St. Catherine.
The Santa Cruz Criminal Investigation branch reported that at 10:00 p.m., a group of men was at a shop playing dominoes when men alighted from a car, and opened fire, killing the two men and injuring the other. The police have not established a motive for the killing.
In St. Catherine, the Guanabovale police are trying to ascertain the identity of a woman whose body was found under the Guanabovale bridge on Sunday afternoon.
Reports are that at 3:30 p.m. yesterday, a resident of the community went to the river to bathe when he saw the woman's body and summoned the police.
Investigating officer Detective Sergeant Derrick Ball of the St. Catherine North homicide team theorised that the female, who appeared to be in her early 20s, was shot and killed elsewhere and the body dumped at the location. This, he added, was the second body to be found in the division in the last 24 hours, as an unidentified male had been found in the Watermount area with gunshot wounds to the upper body.
In Kingston, two taxi operators were found shot dead in separate incidents on the weekend. Thirty year-old Granville Coke was found in Diamond Road, Kingston 11 on Saturday night and 29-year-old Alphonso Trowers was found in Kingston's Calvary Cemetery at 1:00 p.m on Sunday.
The Gleaner spoke to Bobbette Trowers, sister-in-law of one of the victims, at the murder scene at Calvary Cemetery: "We call him bout minutes to nine an' him seh him soon come home. When we call him again we nuh get no answer from him an' den him nuh come een last night.
"So dis mawning we call him frien' dem an' dem start look fi him. Later in a di day dem call an' seh dem fin' a body an dem a go look if a fi him. Dem call we back an' seh a him."
It was the second such find in the cemetery this week as residents had discovered a burnt unidentified body there last week Tuesday.
