TONY Welch, whose reputation as a PNP street tough stretches back to the 1970s, was yesterday questioned by the police investigating last week’s triple murder in Temple Hall, St Andrew, apparently over the control of jobs on a road repair project.

Welch was taken in by his lawyer K Churchill Neita.

“He is being questioned by the police because allegations are being made implicating him in the recent triple murder at Temple Hall,” Superintendent Ionie Ramsay, head of the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN), told the Observer.

Welch, who was deported to Jamaica seven years ago after serving time for drug charges in the United States, wields heavy influence in the St Andrew community of Brandon Hill where the road repair project recently wound down.

A new segment of the job was about to start in Stony Hill.

Welch, 55, was the so-called community liaison officer for the Brandon Hill phase of the project for the PNP (People’s National Party), which in the context of Jamaican public works jobs is a euphemism for the political type who determines who is employed on a scheme and negotiates with the other party’s representative on dividing up the work.

The relative influence of liaison officer depends on the voting strength of the party in the section of the community in which the work is being done.

Among those killed in last week’s shooting incident was Howard Fuller, 42, who, according to JLP parliamentarian Andrew Gallimore, was to be his party’s liaison officer for the Stony Hill segment of the road repair project.

Gallimore had claimed that Fuller and his friends were killed because a Brandon Hill crowd would lose influence over the jobs on the project.