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Stabroek News

Jamaican slays mother, others before turning gun on self
published: Friday | April 20, 2007

NEW YORK, (CMC):

A suicidal Jamaican man on Wednesday, killed his Jamaican mother, her Jamaican wheelchair-bound boyfriend and a home health aide before fatally shooting himself in a bloody rampage in a family home in the Cambri section of Queens, the police said.

Police said Jimmie Dawkins, 20, killed his mother, 44-year-old Sonia Taylor, minutes after she had called the emergency services, 911, for help.

"My son is destroying the house," police quoted Taylor, a hospital worker, as telling a 911 dispatcher.

"If cops don't come soon, something terrible is going to happen," she added.

"Just get the police here," Taylor pleaded with the dispatcher, who had asked if Dawkins had a weapon.

Police said when they arrived at the house, 14 minutes later, they found Taylor and Syndia Jean-Pierre, 28, the home health aide, lying just feet apart on the ground floor. Police said they were shot in the face.

Police also found Arnold Lawson, 47, dead in a back bedroom.

Police said Dawkins killed himself on the second floor, firing a bullet into his right temple.

The only survivor

Laurice Johnson, 21, Lawson's nephew, who had just migrated from Jamaica three weeks ago, was the only survivor.

He told police he hid inside a bedroom closet after Dawkins killed his own mother and Jean-Pierre.

He said he was visiting his uncle, who had suffered a stroke, and was in the bedroom when Dawkins shot his uncle in the chest and face, the police said.

He then hid in the closet, but Dawkins fired at the door, grazing him in the leg. Johnson told cops he then played dead and then jumped out a window, running shoeless down the middle-class street to a restaurant, where he begged the owner to call 911.

Police said Dawkins used a .40-calibre handgun in launching into the murder/suicide bloody rampage.

Police said he was arguing with his mom beforethe incident, and that they had been at the home.

But Taylor's sister, Annetta, blamed the police for failing to protect her sister from her "mentally ill" son.

"My sister was scared!" Annetta Taylor screamed. "She thought this might happen!"

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