Sashelia Hall hugs one of her two daughters while weeping for Ryan Dunkley who was shot dead at his home yesterday by gunmen while he held two of his daughters. Dunkley fathered two children with Hall. (Photo: Garfield Robinson)

It didn't matter to the gunmen who invaded Ryan Dunkley's yard - a tenement at 40 Maxfield Avenue in Kingston - that he was holding two of his daughters.

The heartless criminals shot him dead, endangering the lives of the two- and four-year-old girls.

The savagery of Dunkley's murder just after midday yesterday sparked more grief and anger in the volatile community that was already fuming at the destruction, by fire, of a shop and three homes along Wellington Road Wednesday night.

The residents believe that the fire, which left about four families homeless, was set by arsonists.
Sashelia Hall, the mother of two of Dunkley's three children, yesterday rolled in the dirt on the piazza of an abandoned shop across the street from the historic Channel One recording studio as she grieved for her loved one. A young boy rubbed her back gently, trying to console her. But despite his most valiant efforts, the child was unable to soothe the woman's pain.

"Them kill him when him a hold the two baby them. Them no have no heart," Hall wailed as her neighbours pointed to Dunkley's two-year-old child whose clothes were stained with her father's blood.

"Boss, nobody cyan sorry fi we? Them a go kill we off. We tired a it, we cyan take no more," a shirtless boy shouted at a Jamaica Defence Force soldier at the murder scene.

The police said the killers struck just after noon. They entered the back of the tenement through a zinc fence and pounced on 21-year-old Dunkley as he relaxed with his children, said a resident.

Detectives said yesterday that the killers are suspected to be from a gang known as Stingers, which has bases in Ramsay Road, Raphael Road and sections of Wellington Road.
Stingers and another gang which operates in the Swettenham Road, Whitfield Avenue and a section of Wellington Road areas, have been at loggerheads for almost two years, the police said.

Dunkley is the third person to be killed in the area since the start of the year. Early Tuesday morning, Dunkley's 25-year-old cousin, Kevin 'Sample' Richards, was shot 21 times as he walked along Wellington Road in the community. On January 3, 23-year-old Nordia Fletcher, a hairdresser, was murdered by gunmen who kicked in the door to her Swettenham Road house and shot her in the stomach. Her murder sparked a demonstration by residents who said that they were being threatened to switch political allegiance from the ruling People's National Party to the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party.

- walkerk@jamaicaobserver.com

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