‘TOO CLOSE TO HOME’
Portmore pastor seeks safer pastures after heinous murders
Published:Saturday | March 19, 2022 | 12:12 AMAndre Williams and Rasbert Turner/Gleaner Writers
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A pastor in the Southboro section of Portmore, St Catherine, said he will be seeking to put his house up for sale following the brutal murder of a woman in the community yesterday afternoon. The clergyman told The Gleaner that the ongoing tension...
A pastor in the Southboro section of Portmore, St Catherine, said he will be seeking to put his house up for sale following the brutal murder of a woman in the community yesterday afternoon.
The clergyman told The Gleaner that the ongoing tension and bloodletting throughout the community have come too close to home and he is concerned about his family living there.
A well-known resident from another section of the community, 48-year-old labourer Angela Forbes, was shot and killed by gunmen in broad daylight, heightening fears throughout the middle-income housing area.
“I don’t want nobody to say that my … is an informer and do anything,” the man of the cloth said.
He has been contemplating the sale for some time now, claiming that yesterday’s shooing was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“When I heard what happened, I rushed over here to ensure my family was okay. It’s not an easy road,” the pastor said.
A resident said the tension has been long-standing and whenever they get a breather, the violence begins to rage again.
“It cooled down, but probably ‘bout two months now, it rise up again,” she said.
“The children were at school, but it was too close to home. Everybody was here, police and soldier,” the woman said of yesterday’s attack, staying inside her verandah to speak with The Gleaner.
The police report that Forbes was along Miranda Pathway when she was shot by gunmen about 12:15 p.m. She was pronounced dead at hospital.
Councillor Ainsley Parkins, who represents Southboro in the Portmore Municipal Corporation, said that Forbes, who was one of his political workers, was seemingly marked for death, given that her home in a section of Southboro called ‘20 Cent’ was among those attacked just days ago.
One resident said that Forbes was no longer living at the location after that attack, but had been visiting someone yesterday.
The councillor said it was sad that area has been tense for a while.
“It was last week that them shoot up her house. The area is tense and she was not to be here this deep in the community,” Parkins said. “There is a need for more intense policing, not the Band-Aid type that is going on.”
He expressed concern that there could be reprisals.
A curfew imposed in the area after a recent gun attack was lifted last Saturday.
“Despite the walk-through and meetings by stakeholders, the violence still a gwaan,” one resident lamented.
Superintendent Hopeton Nicholson, head of operations for the St Catherine South Police Division, told The Gleaner that the police will be doing all they can to bring peace to the community.
The Greater Portmore police are probing the incident and have again increased their presence in the area.
Up to March 15, the St Catherine South Police Division had been seeing a 33.3 per cent year-on-year decline in murders, with 20 homicides this year, compared to 30 for the corresponding period in 2021.