OPERATION CRACKDOWN

They have been using vehicles borrowed from governmental departments and statutory bodies in the thrust aimed at crime reduction.

Sadly though, the tough renewed crackdown by local police units in the anti-crime drive perhaps arrived too late for a 31-year-old Layou fisherman. The body of Algernon Lynch was discovered just off Middle Street in that Central Leeward town last Saturday night. {{more}}The circumstances leading up to Lynch’s death were still being pieced together and the Serious Crime Unit was drawn into action soon after the Saturday night tragedy.

According to Evans Lynch, 28, the brother of the deceased, death was from gunshot wounds to the stomach. Another brother, Kenute Lynch, 24, was in a similarly depressed mood last Sunday.

For Evans Lynch, it has been a life of near torment in that district. Reports suggest a history of conflict in which the Lynch brothers have been on the receiving end of attacks from other members of the community.

“The man an dem shoot me two times a’ready,” Evans said. The brothers gave the names of persons whom they believe were involved in the recent incident.

“Me nah know way the man an’ dem ah fight ‘gainst me so,” Evans added.

He is, however, concerned about “justice for my brother”.

It was a situation of widespread family grief. For as Bob Marley in one of his songs “Johnny Was,” put it: “Can a woman’s tender care, cease toward the child she bear?”

Verene Lynch, Algernon’s 60-year-old mother, suffers with knee- related problems and is barely able to walk. It is partly for that reason she says she misses her son dearly.

“He does lift me up, carry me out in the road, bring the van and take me up. Now he dead,” Verene said.

She described her murdered son as kind and generous. “He gave me whatever he had,” Verene confessed.

The family’s grief has struck deep.

Maria Holder, originally from the South Leeward district of Lowmans, is left to care for the two children she shared with the late Algernon. They are Johnny, aged four, and Johnisha, three.

Holder was trying to stay strong and offered words of consolation to her mother-in-law at the mother’s small wooden house in Plan, Sunday morning.

Meanwhile Julius John, otherwise known as “Pipie”, was remanded and charged for Lynch’s murder and appeared at the Serious Crime Court last Wednesday morning.

The police crackdown meanwhile was very evident over the weekend with police squads combing the highways and neighbourhoods in the search for arms and armed criminals.

In the process there have been some complaints from some quarters about heavy handedness on the part of some members of the security forces.