WHO IS Bashington 'Chen Chen' Douglas, the man charged with illegal possession of firearm and shooting with intent by the police, in the aftermath of last year's shootings in Kraal district in Clarendon?
According to police, he is an alleged gang leader from Homestead, who was the main target of Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams and former members of the Crime Management Unit's visit to Kraal district, Clarendon, on May 7, 2003. He allegedly escaped a shoot-out with the police that day, and later, turned himself in to the National Firearm and Drug Intelligence Centre (NFDIC), downtown Kingston, in July 1993, and is currently facing the courts.
Family members deny the police's claims. They argue that Chen Chen was no gun-toting criminal, or a gang leader. He was merely a man who grew up in a violent environment, and had been trying to turn his life around.
According to a statement from Chen Chen himself, released to The Sunday Gleaner, he was introduced to the macho street theatre that often defines life in inner-city communities at the relatively tender age of 13 when gunmen invaded his house in a politically motivated attack.
The family home was located on Lawrence Drive, which at the time supported the People's National Party (PNP) and which bordered Homestead, a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) stronghold. The gunmen were reportedly supporters of the PNP.
"The PNP wanted to kill my father, and the only reason neither me nor Shortman (Chen Chen) get shot was that dem bullets did done," 40-year-old Rosalie Douglas, who was 16 at the time of the attack, told The Sunday Gleaner.
"The bullets chop off one side of my mother's head where two plaits used to be... no hair cannot grow there again," Ms. Douglas, Chen Chen's older sister, explained.
There are accounts of his house being torched in a politically motivated attack years later, death threats to his father, and later, the violent shooting death of his father on May 8, 1996 while he was working as a security guard at a construction site.
"Shortman (Chen Chen) ran away from Homestead in 1995 after the police said he shot this guy in his foot. That same guy who was shot in the foot was killed by the police in a shoot-out a few years later," Ms. Douglas said.
COMING TO KRAAL
Chen Chen decided to settle down in his father's district of Kraal, and after a while, the entire Douglas clan went to live there. He got a job working for Brett Young of the Ausjam Mining Company, and bought a piece of land on which he did farming.
Chen Chen lived in a rented house with his common-law wife, Angella Richards, who had later joined him in Kraal in March 2003 after 'One Order' gunmen in Homestead shot up her restaurant.
The Douglas clan is well acquainted with tragedy.
Chen Chen is charged with illegal possession of a firearm and shooting with intent and will reappear in the May Pen Magistrate's Court on April 20.
