JUST hours before her murder on Sunday night, the usually brave Corporal Bevon Hutchinson-Anderson shared with the grandmother of her 12-year old son that she was scared.

She had just days prior, told her lover Osbourne Whitton — a 58-year-old sergeant who opted for early retirement from the police force — that she wanted to end their affair. “She told him she wanted a break,” her neighbour Delroy Martin told the Observer from his Melrose Mews home in Mandeville, Manchester.

On a previous occasion, there was an incident involving Hutchinson-Anderson, the father of her child, 45-year-old Rohan Shaw, and the ex-cop. According to family members, the matter was reported to a judge in chambers. During that meeting Hutchinson-Anderson told the judge that Whitton should be held accountable in the event that she and Shaw were harmed.

And just two weeks ago, Shaw’s relatives said, the excop broke into Hutchinson-Anderson’s home. They were unable to say what, if anything, was taken.

On Sunday afternoon, Hutchinson-Anderson was at the home of Shaw’s mother at Rosedale Drive in New Green, Mandeville for dinner to celebrate her 43rd birthday. It was there that she expressed her fear of being harmed, but did not elaborate.

Shortly after, her cellphone began ringing incessantly. Glancing at the phone she ignored the calls until it became difficult for her to do so. “Why don’t you leave me alone,” she reportedly told the caller on the other end of line before hanging up in a huff.

Later that night, Hutchinson-Anderson and her son Keinon Shaw left for her home in a car being driven by Keinon’s dad.

“Soon come back, mummy,” Shaw told his mother Hermine Neil before leaving. But that would be the last time Neil would see her son, grandson and Hutchinson-Anderson alive. Minutes before midnight on Sunday, all three were brutally gunned down by Whitton, who had gained entrance to Hutchinson-Anderson’s home with a key he had.

“We hear somebody scream and some gunshots,” said Martin, who lives in the house in front of Hutchinson-Anderson’s. “Every three seconds I hear shots firing.”

After the shooting subsided, Whitton, according to Martin, came over to his house, gun in his pocket, asking for his (Martin’s) wife.

“Mi want unnu fi know say Hutchie a gwaan like she a saint, but she a no saint. Tomorrow unnu wi see what happened,” the ex-cop said, according to Martin. “She a gwaan like she an’ de man no deh, but she an’ de man deh. Mi come ketch dem inna bed naked. My money inna dat enuh, Mr Martin. My money inna dat.”

According to Martin, Whitton told him that Shaw, a restaurant operator, had pulled a gun on him but that the gun misfired. Whitton then left Martin’s home, and went back to Hutchinson-Anderson’s home where several more shots were heard. A single explosion was heard after the police arrived, said Martin — the point at which it is believed that Whitton took his own life.

Except for the yellow caution tape used by the police to cordon off the unfinished concrete house, and a narrow streak of blood stain on the white door of the Patterson Drive home, there was no indication of the horror that had taken place inside.

Hutchinson-Anderson, a cop for 18 years, has a husband in the United States to whom she had been married for the past nine years, and a 21-year-old son. Whitton has a wife living in the US and is the father of several children, the Observer was told. Shaw died leaving two daughters — 16 and six years old.

The Observer arrived at the home of Shaw’s mother to see teary-eyed family members.

“He was a son, a husband and a brother to me,” said Neil. “I was not expecting it.”

Hours after the incident, commissioner of police Owen Ellington issued a release appealing to police personnel with domestic and other personal problems to seek help. “Members and former members should not be afraid to receive counselling or therapeutic assistance,” said Ellington.

Sunday’s murder-suicide follows that in Three Hills, St Mary on April 7 when Corporal Wayne Llewellyn shot his wife and killed four members of her family before committing suicide.

Ironically, Shaw knew Llewellyn and is said by his mother to have remarked, “I knew he would do something like that,” upon hearing the news.

Meanwhile, the students in Keinon Shaw’s Grade 6S class at McIntosh Memorial Primary School were up to yesterday afternoon receiving counselling. Some students broke down on hearing the tragic news.

“He was well-behaved. I never see him in a fight,” Shaw’s teacher Donnette Simpson said of the little boy. “He takes a lot of interest in his work.”

Hutchinson-Anderson was spoken of in glowing terms by Superintendent Lascelles Taylor of the Mandeville Police Station.