Linval Thompson, the slain young man whose evidence helped to send four men behind bars for the murder of his mother and stepfather, begged to be relocated to the eastern Caribbean, one of his sisters has revealed.

The authorities refused to send Thompson abroad, claiming that the case in which he was involved was not “high-profile” enough, his sister said. Instead, they offered to relocate Thompson to some remote part of Jamaica under the government’s witness protection programme.

In the end, Thompson and the surviving members of his family opted to stay out of the programme, but decided to move from the tough inner-city area of 100 Lane, off Red Hills Road in Kingston.

Gilbert Scott, the permanent secretary in the national security ministry was not there at the start of the Thompson case. The information he now has is that Thompson declined to be part of the scheme, but not the reasons why.

“The information we have is that he refused the offer of protection,” Scott told the Sunday Observer. “Whether he refused it outright or said, ‘I will only do it if’, I don’t know. But the information that is available is that he was offered and he refused.”

Whatever dispute that may now arise about why Thompson was not under the government’s protection, he gave evidence in the case of the men charged with his parents’ murder, studied and moved up in his job at First Global Financial Services and seemed to have ended up dead for doing what many people refuse to do – have his day in court.

On April 13, days after the police held another of the suspects in the August 2001, 100 Lane killings, Thompson was himself murdered while sitting in a taxi at a busy Kingston intersection at 8:15 in the morning.

He had apparently been trailed from his new home in Portmore, St Catherine. Thompson sat between two women in the rear seat of a taxi as it waited at the traffic lights to turn right from Hope Road onto Trafalgar Road.

A motorcycle stopped behind the taxi. Its pillion rider came off, ran up to the taxi’s rear windscreen and shot Thompson in the head.

The incident has renewed focus on the scope and breadth of Jamaica’s witness protection programme and has raised questions as to why Thompson was not in the scheme.

“We asked if they could send him to a small island (a Jamaican reference to the English-speaking Caribbean islands in the eastern Caribbean) and the police said no,” Thompson’s older sibling told the Sunday Observer.

“They said they only do that in high-profile cases.”

“The police said they would send him to a remote area in the country,” she said.

It has emerged that while Jamaica and its Caribbean Community (Caricom) partners have been talking for several years about a structured regional witness programme, one is not in place, although there is some level of bilateral cooperation.

“We have co-operation with other Caricom states and outside of Caricom,” Scott said. “But that’s a two-way arrangement. The regional (multilateral) aspect of the programme is still under development. There are only a few states within Caricom that have an active justice protection programme, but with those that have, we do have an active collaboration.”

Several considerations played into Thompson’s decision not to accept the police’s offer that he join the witness protection programme, his sister explained. One of these, it appears, was an ambivalence about the effectiveness of the programme.

“Many times you listen to the news and read the paper you hear that a witness who was in the programme had died,” said this sister, who does not wish to use her name. “That made us really scared.”

Additionally, Thompson, who attended Calabar High School, had just got a job at First Global as a messenger. He rode a small motorcycle delivering letters and other packages around Kingston.

By the time of his death, the ambitious 23 year-old, who was studying for his ‘A’levels, was an audit clerk at First Global Financial Services and the key organiser and participant in sporting events involving the GraceKennedy group. According to family and co-workers he was a free-spirited, engaging person who wanted to enjoy life.

Family unity, especially after the death of their mother and stepfather, also appeared to be important to the clan.

Said Thompson’s sister: “The police could not guarantee they could send him to a small island in 2001 when Mom just died. He had just got his job and was in school. We outlined that to the police. They could not guarantee him a small island; he would still be in Jamaica.

“We also heard that many times rent (for the homes of persons in the witness protection programme) was not paid and they had to go back (to their original) home.

“They offered Linval protection. But that required that he would have to be away from his family at some remote place that we couldn’t go and visit him. He would be there just by himself. And because he was still shaken by his mother’s death we decided just to move from the area (100 Lane).”

The family moved to the parish of St Catherine, but kept in contact with the police officer who was on the case. This officer gave Thompson pointers to be used while he was on the road.

The young man was advised to wear his motorcycle helmet while on the road, partly for protection, partly as a disguise, and to be continually aware of his surroundings.

“That worked up until they captured the last guy (murder suspect),” said Thompson’s sister. “At the time the police did not tell us they had this guy. For us it was just hearsay.

“A policeman was with us straight until he was transferred to (Operation) Kingfish (which targets drugs and gangs).

Apparently, he was taken off the case, but from time to time he would still come to check with us. I don’t think he was the one who was assigned to our case but he still kept in contact. That last contact was in March.”

Assistant commissioner of police George Williams suggested that the police did as much for Thompson as they could, once he decided not to be part of the witness protection programme.

During the trial of the murderers of Thompson’s parents, Williams said, the police ensured that he safely got to court and back to his home and cops helped to ensure that “his surroundings, to the best of our ability, were pretty safe”.

Even after the case ended “we still gave him some support”, checking on Thompson from time-to-time, the cop added.

Said Williams: “We just didn’t leave him on his own, but we didn’t follow him around daily, minutely, hourly.”

Asked whether it could be assumed that the police were in contact with Thompson up to near the time of his death, Williams said: “I can’t say that was so. I am not the person who was doing it. But what I do know is that the police was in some kind of contact with him.”