Man gunned down in Portmore, St Catherine

Ruddy Mathison, Gleaner Writer 

The police in Portmore, St Catherine are yet to establish a motive for the shooting death of a man in Newland on Sunday afternoon.

The deceased has been identified as 39-year-old Kadian Bennett, a utility worker of a Portmore address.

The police report that Bennett went to visit a co-worker on Newland Road after dropping off his seven-month-old child at his grandparents.

It is further reported that about 1:58 p.m. three men rolled up in a white Nissan AD wagon without registration plates and opened fire, hitting Bennett multiple times in his upper body.

He was pronounced dead at hospital.

The co-worker he was sitting with in the front of the year reportedly saw the three men exit the car armed with guns and fled before they were able to get to him.

Neville Bennett, the deceased man's father, said that his son was not the target of the attack.

"He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They wanted somebody else and I know that of a fact," he told The Gleaner.

According to him, the shooting is a reprisal for the killing of 69-year-old Paulette Brown who was shot and killed at her house about 3:00 a.m. on Saturday by gunmen who kicked her door in and peppered her with bullets.

"My son is not a wrongdoer. He was waiting on his COVID-19 test result to take up a job in the Cayman Islands and now he is gone. Mi feel it till I can hardly talk. They killed a good man who nuh involved in a nothing," the father said.

Another man, Craig Sinclair, narrowly missed death when the gunmen also fired on his white Toyota motorcar as he pulled up to pick up his grandchild near to where the attack occurred.

"I observed the white AD wagon without plates pulled in behind me. From my rear view mirror, I saw them come out with guns in hand and started shooting at Kadian who was sitting near the fence on a chair with his back turned to where the men approach from," Sinclair revealed.

"I started to move away when one of the men fired several shots in the direction of the driver's side of my car. If I didn't lean my head forward when I heard the first shot I would have got it flush in the back of my head," he continued.

Sinclair believes the men were trying to kill him because he was on the scene of the crime.

In the meantime, residents are calling for more police presence along Newland Road and adjoining streets.

A relative of the deceased man said the police have not been effective in fighting crime in the area and there is a fear that the violence will continue.

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