Less than a week after 40-year-old Detective Corporal Dave Daley was murdered in Duhaney Park, St Andrew, the man police said was the main suspect wanted in connection with the killing turned himself in to the authorities yesterday.

The police say Christopher Thomas of a Brook Valley address in St Andrew, accompanied by his lawyer, went to Major Investigation Taskforce detectives yesterday morning.

Superintendent in charge of the St Andrew South Police division, Newton Amos, told the Sunday Observer that Thomas was the third person to turn himself in after his brother, Junior Thomas, handed himself over to the Kingston Criminal Investigation Bureau on Wednesday evening, and another man, known only as Leeford, handed himself over on Tuesday evening.

“He is the third person to have done so, but he is our main suspect and we are very pleased that he has allowed good sense to prevail and take himself in, and we are well on our way now to doing a number of things which I will not speak to right now, but it goes to show how important it is for us to work together as a people to ensure that we don’t allow criminality to consume us,” Amos told the Sunday Observer.

He said Thomas had no choice but to surrender as the police made short work of closing the ranks on him after he was identified as one of the persons who was involved in the fatal shooting of the corporal.

“We went in pursuit, and since then we have been tracking him in some five different sections, both in the vicinity of Brook Valley and the St Andrew South Division, and I’m sure that has led him to understand that we were not sparing any time in getting him into custody,”

Amos stated.

“We are very pleased with the pace and the progress of the investigations. I said at the inception that we wanted to close this up one way or the other at the shortest possible time, and the police efforts, the resources that were made available to treat with this, we are very pleased to know we are able to do this,” Amos added.

The superintendent said a manhunt is now on for another man known as ‘Harry Dog’ who might be connected to the murder.

“There is still one outstanding that we still have an interest in ‘Harry Dog’, we still have an interest in him,” said Amos. “We are now going to go even harder in terms of our vigilance and in pursuit of him so we can bring complete closure. We don’t want just a few of them, we want all of them, but we will take what we have for the time being and we are pursuing him and we urge him to do likewise and turn himself in.”

In the meantime, he said three other persons were also arrested and charged with illegal possession of ammunition in the Port View area of Brook Valley where an operation was conducted two days ago.

Amos said while the persons arrested were not linked to the murder, the police believe they could assist with the probe.

Daley, who served the constabulary for 19 years, was cut down in Brook Valley on Monday night.

According to the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN), at approximately 9:40 pm, Daley, who was assigned to the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse, was carrying out enquiries in Duhaney Park, and on reaching Brook Avenue he saw a group of men arguing. Daley allegedly intervened in the argument, during which he was fired on by a group of gunmen.

Daley, the CCN said, returned the fire and managed to fatally injure one of the men. However, Daley, a single parent and father of two, received several gunshot wounds during the exchange and died on the spot. The men took his service pistol. The other man was identified by the police only as ‘Joel’.

There was, however, an unconfirmed report that shortly before his death Daley got into an altercation with several men along Brook Avenue, after one of them threw a stone at his car.