Survivors recount high-drama chase by gunmen in Manchester

When a vendor set out to ply her wares in the Christiana Market two Saturdays ago, she had no idea that the truck in which she was travelling would have become the target of gunmen in a high-speed chase through the countryside.

The random pickup from a butcher heading to purchase cows at the animal market in the Manchester town was the beginning of a dramatic episode that ended with the two fleeing for their lives in bushes after their attackers sprayed the vehicle with gunfire, hitting her several times.

That brush with death is a rarity in the quiet north Manchester region – a hodgepodge of bustling vendors and sprawling farms famous for tubers like potato, as well as other cash crops.

The vendor, who requested that her name not be published because of security fears, said that they sensed danger when a taxi whizzed past them in Walderston. It was the same vehicle they had passed earlier on when they were approaching Penn Hill.

She said the driver of the car slowed down, switched on the hazard lights, and appeared to indicate that he might be having mechanical problems.

But the butcher, who has been the victim of road robberies twice before, smelled a rat.

Years ago, he escaped robbers who tried to block the road in Lawrence Tavern, St Andrew, but not before a single shot was fired in his direction.

But the 5 a.m. Manchester attack, he said, was “far worse”.

The butcher said he had also been spooked by tales of robbers pulling people over or staging an emergency in Walderston. He had one intention: floor the accelerator.

“Mi was so surprised when mi come through Walderston Square, mi see the car overtake me and go over pan the left-hand side a fan me down. But me not stopping fi nuh baddi!” the butcher, who also requested anonymity because of safety concerns, told The Gleaner in an interview.

About nine shots were fired at the truck, blowing out the two front tyres.

The market vendor, who is in her 40s, could not quite believe she was in a real-life horror movie.

“Just as I asked him if those were gunshots, the truck swerved as the taxi was right at his window trying to undertake him,” she said.

The vendor theorises that the attackers may have had knowledge of the butcher’s plans to make purchases at the market.

“They rob him already, and how they chasing the vehicle, you know they were after something; they wouldn’t stop,” she recalled.

“As we were going to pass, they fired shots directly in the truck from the passenger side ... .”

The woman, who took cover on the floor of the truck, said she felt numbness in her fingers and soon realised she had been shot when blood began to flow.

“By this time, the truck shoot up and the tyres gone now, but we managed to drive a distance away from them. The driver wanted to go to the station, but I told him no, as they would be expecting us to take that route,” she said.

“I told him, ‘Let us take a detour,’ because we couldn’t manage to have them catch up on us and overtake us again.”

Dashed into bushes

After abandoning the truck at the Chudleigh service station, they dashed into the bushes.

“While we were there, we hear a car speeding down and we knew it was them. I had left a backpack with dirty clothes, my phone, and about $400 in the truck which they made off with,” she said.

The vendor used the driver’s phone to call her relative, who then summoned the police.

“It was after leaving the police station and I go to the hospital, I realise that I got shot so many times ... . There were three large holes in my side and the doctor said that it’s where the bullets enter and exit ... ,” she said.

The vendor revealed that the bullets hit a nerve and that motion in two fingers is now compromised. Resigned to the prospect of undergoing therapy, she is relieved that the butcher had not been shot during the chase.

The butcher said that he is happy that he took the advice of his passenger not to head to the police station but to abandon the vehicle near the service station in Chudleigh. Two more minutes of driving, he said, could have cost them their lives.

Ten days after their harrowing experience, the butcher is oozing gratitude that he survived because of divine intervention.

“A just mi faith inna God and mi confidence. Anyhow me did lose confidence, we woulda dead,” he told The Gleaner.

The attackers had struck hours earlier, boarding the taxi in Mandeville on Friday, May 14, at approximately 8 p.m.

While en route to May Day, the men pulled their guns and demanded that the driver head to Christiana.

It was there that the gunmen tied up the taxi driver and a passenger in bushes, while two of the men made off with the vehicle and one stayed back to keep watch.

When they were released on May 15, the cabbie and passenger travelled to the Williamsfield police and reported the matter.

Superintendent of Police Gary Francis, commander of the Manchester Police Division, said no one has been taken into custody in relation to the crimes.

Violent crime has fallen in Manchester this year, with declines of 40 per cent and 25 per cent in murders and shootings, respectively, up to May 19.

The butcher, who has been travelling to the cow market in Manchester since 1991, warned that criminals are scouting for prospective victims under the guise of being customers.

“Dem a go come back, and the comeback one a go worse than this,” he said.

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