Residents gather outside the ill-fated bar in Broadgate, St Mary, where three people, including a gunman, were shot and killed and two others injured. Photo below shows items left behind that tell the story of Thursday night’s gun attackTHURSDAY night’s fatal shooting of three people, including a gunman, at the ‘Little Pub’ bar in the usually quiet district of Broadgate, St Mary has left the owners fearful and doubtful about continuing in business.
“I don’t know if I want to continue this bar thing; I really can’t deal with it. I (am) not waiting for them to come back for me,” said the bar owner, who asked that her name be withheld.
The businesswoman said she just managed to escape injuries by running through the bar’s rare entrance, after two gunmen barged in about 8:00 pm, accosted a customer and began firing wildly. “As the first shot fire I just ran out. Is so I never get shot,” recounted the woman, who was yesterday morning still traumatised from the ordeal.
Lawrence Palmer, a 53-year-old farmer of Richmond, St Mary, who police said was one of two customers who were armed with licensed firearms; his friend Claire Bourne, 40, of Roehampton Drive in Kingston; and an unidentified man, believed to be one of the gunmen, were killed during the gunfight. Police said the unidentified man was found, face down, a few feet from the bar on the roadway. He was allegedly clutching a Browning 9mm semi-automatic pistol with its registration number erased. The other gunman, residents claimed, limped from the crime scene and hopped onto a truck. The injured — a man and a woman — were taken to the Annotto Bay Hospital for treatment, a female employee at the medical facility said.
The man was shot in the abdomen, while the woman was grazed on her head by a bullet. Their conditions were unclear up to last night. Yesterday, the shocked bartender turned down a request by the Observer to view inside the establishment. But clots of blood, a pair of slippers, two hats, and Palmer’s gun holster strewn on a verandah outside told the gory tale of the incident. Residents from nearby districts filed onto the area at daybreak, fuming in condemnation of the incident.
“This bar open more than 20 years now and I never see anything like this happen yet. I sorry them never catch the other one [gunman], and we can’t kill the dead one again,” said a female onlooker. Inspector Gladstone Ellis of the Annotto Bay Police Station speculated that the gunmen may have been from Kingston. “We are doing some investigation and trying to locate the other one. But we believe that they came from ‘Town’,” he said.
Another gun crime in Jamaica. Are there ever going to be a time when this kind of useless lost of a human life will end. Jamaicans need to understand that they are human beings and whatever dispute there is can always be resolve verbally instead of the pulling of a gun. There are two are three families mourning today because of selfishness. Grow up people.