MEMBERS of two gangs who have been terrorising sections of Bay Shore, Harbour View in East Rural St Andrew, have either fled from the community or are lying low, police have confirmed.

The members of the rival gangs have been wreaking havoc on the community for several years and have been linked to the mysterious death and alleged disappearance of some people, among other acts of atrocities that have been committed in that section of the Corporate Area in recent time.

Last week, an informant told the Jamaica Observer of a secret burial place in the general community where people were killed and their bodies disposed of.

The practice, the informant said, had been going on for several years and carried out by gangs in Bay Shore, an area that some people have detached from Harbour View, but which is officially listed as a part of that densely populated community.

Violence in Bay Shore stepped up a notch in recent weeks with the murder of 26-year-old Mona Primary School grade five teacher Paul Walker, 26, and his friend Omar ‘Biggs’ Campbell on January 4.

Related to that is the burning of four buildings — three houses and a shop — between Thursday, January 23, and Saturday, January 25, which forced the East Kingston police to deploy personnel there and maintain a visible presence in the general area.

With the increased heat and added scrutiny, the gangsters aligned to one group met in secret last week and decided to suspend their irregular activities, forcing some to move out of the area.

“The man dem keep a meeting last week Monday and dem decide that man and man fi scatter because a the newspaper thing and now police come inna the area,” a source in the community told the Sunday Observer.

Last week, the Sunday Observer highlighted some of the atrocities that had been going on in the area over time, including the gruesome stabbing death of Jhordayne ‘Jimmy’ Francis over four years ago. No one has been charged for that murder.

The source said that a key member of one of the gangs had fled Jamaica early last week, but police superintendent in charge of East Kingston Arthur Brown said that while the individual may have left Bay Shore, police “intelligence” was telling him that the individual was still in Jamaica.

“I don’t think it’s true. I think he is still here. He is a person of interest and we are after him,” Brown said.

Another individual who heads the rival gang is also being sought, Brown said.

“I think that one of them is still in the area and the other one frequents the area. But the gang members seem to be scattering because of the police operations in the community.

“It is a fight over turf, for control of the community, which has resulted in the shooting death of two persons and the injury of three persons. A shop and three homes have been torched since the feud between the two gangs, but nothing has happened since last Saturday (January 25) and we will continue to have the police presence in the area,” Brown said.

The superintendent confirmed that a meeting between citizens and the police was held in Bay Shore last Friday night to reassure the people that the police are committed to protecting them.

Regarding claims by a former gangster that people had been killed and their bodies buried in sections of the Hope River over the years, Brown said that he had no information on that.

“When the matter surfaced last week it was the first time that it had come to our attention,” Brown told the Sunday Observer in an interview Friday.

“We know that persons were killed in the area, but bodies were found. I cannot speak to bodies being buried. I have no information or confirmation that that is happening. If it is so, persons who have information, we would want them to come to the police to give us that information so that we can move forward with our investigations,” Brown said.

The Sunday Observer informant said that there were heated exchanges between men linked to one of the gangs last Monday, with two of the members almost coming to fisticuffs over what was happening in the area.

At the centre of the verbal exchange was the killing of the teacher, Walker, who, along with Campbell were said to be the wrong persons murdered. That incident too, attracted intense media attention, which the gangsters had not bargained for, the source said.

Bay Shore remained tense, but relatively safe, the police said and urged citizens that their backs would be covered if they wanted to go about their normal duties.