News

Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

THE FOUR men who abducted three women from a bar at Newport West, Kingston 12, in October 2005 and, after sexually assaulting them, shot them and dumped them in a sewage pit have been convicted of double murder.

One of the women managed to get out of the pit and was the main witness for the Crown at the three-week trial in the Home Circuit Court.

The jury retired Monday for more than an hour before returning verdicts that Sheldon Duncan, Desmond Kennedy, Alton Heath and André Reid were guilty of murder.

They will be sentenced on March 26 and are likely to face the death penalty.

The deceased are Simone Vernon and Katherine Webb.

Attorney-at-law Kathy Pyke and Crown Counsel Kelly-Ann Boyne led evidence at the three-week in-camera trial before Justice Gloria Smith and the jury that in October 2005, the accused Reid and other men abducted the women from a bar at Newport West and took them to a football field at Greenwich Farm. Men were at the playing field and some of them raped the women before shooting and dumping their bodies in the pit.

Investigations by the police led to the arrests of the four men. They were charged with murder during the course of and furtherance of abduction rape and robbery.

It was reported that the women were fatally shot in a reprisal for a double murder on McKenley Crescent, Kingston 11, which had occurred some weeks before the incident.

barbara.gayle@gleanerjm.com