TWO people were yesterday shot dead in a fresh outbreak of violence in the troubled Mountain View Avenue area of the capital.

The brazen murders of Marcia Sawyers Williamson, a 56 year-old mother of two, and 32 year-old Mark Bitter sent shock and anger throughout the communities and left residents puzzled about the motives.

Williamson was killed at about 3:30 pm inside her home at 2a Saunders Avenue by two gunmen on foot who entered her house. Her 13 year-old daughter, who was also inside the house at the time, was spared only because she hid under a bed in a locked room.

Williamson had married in February of this year and had just moved into the house with her 24 year-old son, her daughter and her husband.

Yesterday, her bewildered and grief-stricken neighbours and church brothers and sisters, whilst moving the family’s belongings out of the house, questioned out loud the motive for killing her, since, they said, she was “a decent God-fearing woman, who never yet trouble anybody”.

“This woman not into anything with anybody,” said a neighbour. ‘De man dem just come inna her yard and see her and kill her. It nuh make no sense.”

According to residents, two men walked into the community and began shooting wildly, resulting in Williamson’s murder and two men from the Saunders Avenue/Jarret Lane area nursing gunshot wounds.

While police investigators documented the remaining evidence, the police got word of Bitter’s murder at 5 Roberts Crescent in Vineyard Town.

Bitter was shot dead by two men carrying handguns as he stood in his backyard holding his neighbour’s infant child. Inside the house, five women and eight small children sat, staring at the walls in shock and crying.

Bitter, who lived in that house for his entire life, was said to be a kind, loving person, who nobody knew to be involved in violence, politics or drugs.

“Dat boy, you see, him go work every day, out a Mr Charles place on Duke Street, and from what I know of him, is a good youth,” his neighbour told the Sunday Observer.

For Bitter’s mother, the pain of losing a child was all too familiar, since just five years ago her older son was cut down by the gun, in post-election violence that affected the community then.

“What have I done? Why Lord why? Wha mek dem take me child, a de second son dem kill so… why?” she lamented.

Yesterday’s shootings followed on last Wednesday’s violence in the area which involved a large group of men carrying high-powered weapons.

The gunmen fired indiscriminately in the area, eventually engaging a nearby police team in a gun battle near to Jarret Lane. No one was killed then, but residents of Jarett Lane, 63 Mountain View Avenue, McGregor Gully and Saunders Avenue all relate different accounts of what actually took place.

Some say this round of violence is politically motivated, while others believe it’s just the result of too many guns, mixed with long-standing enmity. What is certain, however, is that people are very afraid, and many families have packed their belongings and fled the area in fear for their lives.

“From election this place take time coming back good, until last Wednesday,” one man told the Sunday Observer. “Wednesday the man dem come an’ start fire, and is random, ’cause a bare wild shot dem a fire, but all now nobody can’t tell me the reason for that, ’cause no more election nah keep. Why dem still a shoot?”

Accusations and counter accusations flew wildly on Friday afternoon when members of the Peace Management Initiative, led by political ombudsman Bishop Herro Blair, and accompanied by MP for the area, Maxine Henry-Wilson, and JLP caretaker, Phillip Henriques, met with residents of the various communities in an effort to quell the violence. Their efforts, however, seem to have been in vain, as on Friday, all the residents of the various communities described their existence as living in a constant war zone, where they were constantly under attack from gunmen from other areas, political hacks and the very police mandated to protect them.

Yesterday, grief stricken residents questioned the possibility of peace, since, they said, the police and the political directorate can’t or won’t help them.

“When it a go stop? Wha we a pay tax for if inna we own yard we haffi a look over we shoulder for gunman? Wha we have government for? Wha we have police for?” questioned one middle-aged man who stood outside Bitter’s home, fighting tears.