A 23 year-old man was arrested in St Catherine and charged with last July’s murder of District Constable Colin Thomas on Mountain View Avenue.

Police identified the suspect as Craig Hazel, otherwise called “Lada”, a labourer of Mountain View Avenue and Succaba East in Old Harbour, St Catherine. He has been charged with murder, robbery, arson, shooting with intent and illegal possession of firearm.

According to the Constabulary Communication Network, the Old Harbour police, who had an arrest warrant for Hazel, carried out an operation at his Succaba East residence at about 10:00 am last Thursday.

Hazel was held by the police and close collaboration with their colleagues at Elletson Road, resulted in Hazel being charged on Saturday with the district constable’s murder.

District Constable Thomas, 33, was sprayed with bullets and his Toyota Mark II car, with his body inside, torched by his killers in the early morning of Monday, July 9 while he was on his way to work at the Rockfort Police Station.

Thomas had apparently stopped at a roadblock set up on Mountain View Avenue by Jamaica Labour Party supporters in protest against the previous weekend’s violence in West Kingston in which more than 20 persons were shot dead during gunfights between the security forces and gunmen.

Thomas was one of four members of the security forces killed as a result of that July 7-9 standoff and its subsequent roadblocks in the capital and other sections of the island.

The others were police Corporal Mark Henry and Lance Corporal Kevin Lawrence of the Jamaica Defence Force, both shot dead on July 7 during the first round of gunfights; and District Constable Errol Stephenson, 35, who died after he was hit on the head with a stone while he tried to clear a roadblock in Rio Bueno, Trelawny on Monday night, July 9.