With over four months remaining in the year, the number of persons killed since January has rushed beyond 900, despite several modifications to a crime plan unveiled by Government nearly three years ago.
By Glenroy SinclairUp to yesterday, police records were showing that at least 902 persons had been killed over the past eight months. Reports reaching The Gleaner are that more than 50 per cent of the murders are still unsolved.
According to the Jamaica Consta-bulary Force's (JCF) weekly crime statistics, 30 persons were killed last week, 17 fewer than the number killed the previous week. The murder toll for the month of August now stands at 114.
ST. JAMES MURDER RATE SOARS
The majority of the killings has taken place in the St. Andrew South and St. Catherine North Police Divisions, which have accounted for 156 and 135 murders respectively. Last week, at least 16 people were killed in the Spanish Town area of the St. Catherine North Division.
Ninety-one persons have so far been killed in St. James, followed by St. Catherine South with 90 and Clarendon with 65.
Further reports are that up to yesterday 149 of the killings were undetermined, 266 were related to reprisals, 206 to domestic disputes, 130 to gang feuds, 110 to robbery, 18 to drugs. The police say another 14 were mobbed and eight raped and killed.
Among the latest victims is an 86-year-old woman who was allegedly chopped to death by her 34-year-old son, David Johnson, who also attacked and wounded his 85-year-old father, Percival, about 7:30 Sunday night.
The police reported that an argument developed between the couple and their son over the playing of a radio. It is has been jailed by the Chapelton police.
"At the moment we are trying to do a profile on the son's medical history," head of the Clarendon Police Division, Superin-tendent Terrence Bent, told The Gleaner yesterday.
The bloodshed continued in the volatile inner-city community of Olympic Gardens in south St. Andrew where the bodies of two men were found in a Toyota motor car along 44th Avenue. Allegations are that residents observed that the car was parked without light for a long period and alerted the police.
The police theorise that the men were killed elsewhere and their bodies dumped in the area. One of the men has so far been identified as Robert Escaliere, 35, of Lauriston, St. Catherine. The other man is unidentified.
