MORE DETAILS ON CLAREMONT KILLINGS

DEATH pounced, around 8:00 pm, taking out three men, two of them elderly, at a little yellow and white shop in the tiny community of Claremont, St Elizabeth, just below Ginger Hill, where the mainstay of the residents is pineapple farming.

A fourth man, 57-year-old George Brown, was slain further along the community’s one entry road as he fled. His sister, Marlene Brown, said her older brother’s throat was slashed by the marauding gunmen, even after they had riddled the other brother, Archibald Brown, 60, with bullets at the shop.

The sweet smell of pineapples permeates the air all the way up the hills of North West St Elizabeth, but at the shop, which was up until Wednesday run by Ezra Wright, 73, there is nothing remotely pleasant about the grief stricken expressions of the family memebers who have been left behind.

The murder of Wright, said to be a hardworking farmer by all, along with the Brown brothers, and 41-year-old Maurice Sanderson, who was a resident of Ginger Hill, has left the community terrified but also angry.

They are angry because since last year, Claremont has been terrorised by criminal elements, some of whom are known to the residents, and who the police believe are the same ones responsible for the cold-blooded, quadruple murder of the farmers.

Corporal Andrew Patterson, who heads up a four-member team now posted in the community, told the Jamaica Observer that, “since the last nine or so months, this is the seventh murder now in this community, coupled with a few robberies and so on. So far we believe it’s the same set of suspects. Before that, the area was very quiet. Apart from the odd domestic cases of wounding, we never used to have anything much that would attract so much police attention,” he said.

The killings moved the number of murders in the parish since the start of this year to nine.

Patterson said that the police is working on a number of leads, and would continue to maintain a presence in the community. “It’s very tense… people are in fear. They are very happy at seeing the police provide that level of reassurance,” Patterson said.

Conroy Wright, the youngest son of Ezra Wright, clearly shaken by the murders, and particularly the loss of his father, said that the saga began when one of the men believed to be involved in the killing showed up at his father’s birthday get-together at the shop on the weekend. “A youth come, and him and that youth not friend, because that youth pass him every day and don’t deal with him. He turned to the youth and said, you must not eat my food or drink my soup, because unu don’t like me,” Wright recalled.

He said that he pulled his father aside and advised him to let the argument die. But it was already too late.

“Right there so it trigger from… they never have any dispute, but them just don’t talk to each other,” he said.

A few days later, the men returned with deadly intent. Wright’s three-year-old clung to his feet as he gestured towards the area beside the deep freezer where he found his father’s body after he was called to the shop in the wake of the shooting. The farmer said that when he arrived, he saw the older Wright lying, bloody, on top of one of the other men who had been shot. “Me daddy a good man. Me father should never die that way. Never,” he remarked, shaking his head.

Wright said that as tense as the community is, he cannot leave his home behind, and that he has to continue with his farming, and pick up where his father was forced to leave off, for the sake of his family. “Me have to take it up now. I have to be the strong one,” he said.

A few metres away sits the Wright family, house, where Ezra Wrights wife, Merl Wright is on the verandah, with a handful of elderly relatives, including one of her husband’s brothers. Merl Wright said that she had heard the gunshots ringing out at the shop, and even saw the flash as the weapons were discharged. She knew something horrible had happened to her husband of over 40 years.

“Me heart jump. I said Lord, have mercy dem kill Ezra. Me see a big light flash…me out the lamp them, and told them (other family members) not to make any noise,” she whispered. A niece, who was also at the shop at the time of the shootings, narrowly escaped death. Merl Wright said she has no idea how she will go on without her husband but is grateful for the support of family, friends, and residents, as well as the police.

Earnel Wright, who sat among the group on the verandah, is also shocked by the killing of his younger brother. “Mi frighten to know my brother gone that way. If him did sick and die, it would be just so, but to know is somebody kill him…” he muttered, his voice trailing off.

Further up the narrow gravel road, Brown sister, who happened to be staying at her brother’s house on the night of the shootings, said that her small children are now too afraid to even venture out for school. She noted that the family had recently buried two other members.

Another of six Brown siblings could be heard muttering to himself, in a state of intoxication, as he climbed the steps to the unfinished house. “Two one time…two one time,” he mumbled. Brown said that this older brother had taken to drinking since the incident.

On Thursday, Police Commissioner Carl Williams led a police team to the area to speak with the relatives and other residents, and promised to have the murderers brought to justice.

But nabbing the killers might take some time, as the gang is said to have taken up vantage points in the very hilly, challenging, terrain overlooking the community, which is on the border of St Elizabeth and St James. The citizens also expressed that they want nothing more than to see the community rid of the murderers, so that they can go about their daily lives in peace and safety, as they once did.