The other crime wave

Aug 16, 2009 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

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-what was the motive for these brutal killings?

By Michael Jordan
It was nightfall, on Sunday March 10, 2002, and popular Albouytown businessman Errol ‘Taps’ Butcher, survivor of many scrapes, was standing outside his America Street business place, when a white car drove up to him. Several gunshots rang out and 55-year Butcher collapsed to the ground, with four bullet wounds to the stomach. Four other bullets pierced the left side of his car.
Butcher was rushed to the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. To prevent other attempts on his life, guards from a private security firm were placed at his door. However, despite the best efforts of his doctors, Butcher died three days later without regaining consciousness.
Detectives would establish that the murder weapon was a 9mm pistol. They would check Butcher’s cell phone and would question a South Ruimveldt resident with whom ‘Taps’ was embroiled in a property dispute. But Butcher’s death remained unsolved.
The execution-style killing of ‘Taps’ Butcher was the first of a string of brutal unsolved killings that had nothing to do with the unprecedented wave of killings that was spawned by the February 23, 2002 escape of prisoners Dale Moore, Shawn Brown, Andrew Douglas, Mark Fraser and Troy Dick.
It would soon become evident that some criminal gangs were waging their own vendetta under cover of the carnage started by the escapees, and had started a crime wave of their own.
On May 5, 2002, just two months after Butcher’s death, Sean Osbourne, Butcher’s 27-year-old son, was standing on the sidewalk outside his Barr Street, Albouystown residence, when the occupants of a car shot at him. Two bullets struck Osbourne in the back. Luckily, he survived the ordeal.
But another sibling was not so lucky.
On Monday, July 15, 2002, Butcher’s 24-year-old son, Ayama Kyte, was riddled with bullets by a group of men in a white car. Some eyewitnesses indicated that Kyte had spoken to the occupants of the car before he was shot.
On May 7, 2002, 37-year-old Mark Franco, who had recently returned from overseas, was traveling in a car with two other men on Mandela Avenue when the occupants of a white car drove up alongside their vehicle. Several gunshots erupted and Franco was mortally wounded. His companions, Osmond Forrester and Junior Callender, called ‘Baby Junior’, were also injured but survived.
At around 20:45hrs on Friday, August 31, 2002, Michael Allen, 20, of Charlotte Street, and Tony Evans, called ‘Buns Eye’ of South Ruimveldt, and a third man were standing outside a shop in James and Hunter Street, Albouystown, when four men, with guns drawn, walked up to them and opened fire at close range.
Allen and Evans were shot in the chest and head and died on the spot. Their companion fled, but another man who was standing nearby was shot in the hip.
Six weeks after the double execution, Joel Evans, a nephew of Tony Evans, was about to buy bread at a Ketley Street bakery when two men walked up to him.
One of the men drew a handgun and shot Evans in the leg. The wounded man managed to flee into Howes Street, Charlestown, but the gunmen pursued Evans and shot him in the head.
But the killings were not confined to the city.
On Sunday, August 6, 2002, Quincy Mc Donald, called ‘Cayenne’, Gary Major, Marsha Semple and Ina Vermeeren were travelling in a car along the Cummings Lodge Railway Embankment when the occupants of another car drove up to the Toyota Marino the friends were in.
As the strange vehicle sped past, the occupants opened fire, riddling the Marino with bullets and killing Ina Vermeeren. Mc Donald, Major, Semple, were also wounded.
Mc Donald would later disappear from the High Dependency Unit at the Georgetown hospital where he was being treated.
Police would later state that one of the occupants of the car was a friend of Wesley Hendricks, called ‘Little Mate’, who had been slain earlier in the year.
And the killings continued into the new year.
On Thursday, July 27, 2003, Wayne Norville, a vendor, of Hill Street, Albouystown, sent a nephew to buy cigarettes. The nephew returned with the cigarettes and left Norville standing on his back stairs talking with another man.
Seconds later, the nephew heard gunshots and Norville cry out that he had been shot. With gunshots still erupting, the wounded man managed to flee into his home, where he collapsed on his bedroom floor.
Residents took Norville to the Georgetown Hospital, where he died shortly after.
There was another unusual case in which a Norton Street youth, Roy Chan, narrowly escaped being executed outside his home. He fled to Trinidad, but the killers trailed him there and gunned him down shortly after.
Now take a leap to 2006.
In March of that year, Clive Budhram, a 26-year-old ex-policeman, was found dead in trench on the northern side of Garnett Street. Someone had shot him in the chest shortly after he had left a liquor restaurant in the same street.
On the night of Thursday, April 6, 2006, Managing Director of SA Nabi and Sons, Ashim Sheer Mohamed was sitting in his pickup, which was parked in the North Ruimveldt Multilateral School compound, when someone shot him twice in the right side temple.
Reports indicate that the killers had driven into the compound in a gold-coloured AT 192 Toyota and then executed the 61-year-old Subryanville businessman. A woman was said to be one of the occupants of the car.
Two years later, on Wednesday, April 2, 2008, Jiffy Lubes proprietor Mohamed Farouk Kalamadeen was taking his usual early morning walk near the Industrial Site, Ruimveldt area when a group of armed men pounced on him.
The men then bundled Kalamadeen into a vehicle and drove off.
On Wednesday, April 30, 2008, Kalamadeen’s headless body was found on a parapet on Cowan Street, Kingston. His head was found a few days later in a canal a short distance from his North Road business.
Kalamadeen’s relatives insist that his abductors never demanded a ransom.
Rumours persist, to this day, that some of the early killings were in retaliation for the theft of the contents of a safe.
Some investigators said that the safe contained a huge cache of cocaine, while others said that it contained high-quality plates for a counterfeiting ring.
It is alleged that the perpetrators refused to hand over the safe’s contents and paid the ultimate price.
But this has never been proven, and now, even with the demise and dismantling of two major criminal gangs, the mystery killings still continue, with no sign of abating.

If you have any information about any unusual case, please contact us at Lot 24, Saffon Street, Charlestown.
You can also call us on telephone numbers 22-58465, 22-58491, and 22-58473. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan by email at mjdragon@hotmail.com.

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