Man convicted in murder of school children

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Mar 8, CMC – A man, who shot and killed four people, including three school boys, in an incident that enraged Jamaicans, is to be sentenced on April 6 after he was found guilty on Tuesday in the Circuit Court for the parish of Clarendon.
The jury took less than an hour to find Jermaine Turner guilty in the April 15, 2015 murders of 14-year-old Raymond Givans, a student of Vere Technical High School; 14-year-old Ricardo Briscoe of the Garvey Maceo High School and 16-year-old Alex Turner of Central High School.
He was also found guilty of murdering 35-year-old Marquis Hamilton, an accounts clerk at the Sugar Company of Jamaica
Turner had pleaded not guilty to the offences and claimed during the three week trial that he was at a different location at the time of the killings.
The Court heard that Hamilton and his common law wife were seated on the perimeter wall of their residence and that the three boys, who were on their way home, stopped near the house to tap into an unsecured wireless Internet service.
The couple was approached by Turner and an accomplice, with Turner, armed with a gun, instructing his cohort to search and rob Hamilton and the woman of their cellular phones.
The woman eventually escaped, but Hamilton and the boys were ordered to lie face down, after which Turner shot the boys execution style in their heads. Hamilton was shot in the chest.
Turner was held during a police operation and the phones belonging to Hamilton and his spouse were taken from him and a relative.
He was later charged with four counts of murder, robbery with aggravation and possession of illegal firearm and ammunition, while the relative was charged with receiving stolen property.
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn told the Jamaica Observer that she hopes the conviction will provide some amount of closure for the families of the victims.
“The police did their job and the court system worked,” she told the newspaper.