BRESIDENTS of Central Avenue, a quiet middle-class section of May Pen, Clarendon, were last Friday still searching for answers about the shooting death of Kemesha Thomas, 23, who was allegedly caught in a crossfire between the police and gunmen two Saturdays ago near her home.

Following a large demonstration and roadblock at Howard Avenue and Guinep Tree Road in May Pen last Sunday morning, at least one policeman involved in the incident has been removed from frontline duty while the police carry out investigations, a police liaison officer for Clarendon has confirmed.

According to a Constabulary Communication Network (CCN) report, Kemesha Thomas died in the crossfire between gunmen and the police near her residence on Central Avenue in May Pen.

The CCN reported that the police were chasing a Toyota Corolla station wagon that was stolen by gunmen in the Mineral Heights area, when the car was intercepted on North Street, near Central Avenue.

The CCN said that the occupants alighted from the stolen vehicle and opened fire at the police. The cops, said the CCN, returned the fire but the armed men escaped. It was subsequently discovered that Kemesha was shot.

However, the young woman’s neighbours and other residents claimed that she was mistakenly shot by the police.

Kemesha died leaving three young children – five-year-old Michael Carty; Cindy Johnson, three, and one-year-old Shanelle Williams

Kemesha’s 82-year-old grandfather, Ivan Moore, said that he was distraught over her death. “She look after me. She is my hand and foot and she do everything for me,” Moore said.

Keisha Thomas, the twin sister of the deceased, told the Observer that Kemesha was killed shortly after they both returned from a supermarket in May Pen late that Saturday evening.

“We spent a long time in the supermarket shopping. then we got a taxi and came home. When we got home we did not pack out the things, we just put down the bags,” Keisha said.

She said that she had persuaded Kemesha not to leave the house to go to a bakery, about a mile away, to buy a loaf of bread that evening, but to wait until the following morning to make the purchase.

“I then went to the bathroom to get a shower,” Keisha said.

While Keisha was bathing Kemesha left the house to go to a nearby shop on North Street to buy phone cards to call their mother in New York. She did not get the phone cards but bought a bottle of drink and was on her way back to the house when she was killed.

“When I came out of the bathroom I heard about nine gun shots. The first thing I asked was, ‘where is Kemesha’?” Keisha said.

Keisha said when she went to the gate her brother (Fabian Gordon), and cousin (Stephen Bailey), who were already by the gate, invited her to “come and look at King Fish (a popular name for the Toyota Corolla police cars) killing a man”.

“Same time my brother and cousin ran across Central Avenue to North Street to see the man who they thought the police had killed. When they got there they shouted is Kem them kill,” Keisha said.

Shopkeeper Darling Hibbert, who has a shop on North Street, told the Observer that Kemesha came to the shop and asked for three phone cards.

“I had none, but she bought a malta, went through the gate and walked down the road. My van was parked at the front of the shop and I was walking to a gate on the side of the shop when I heard like a vehicle had hit into something,” Hibbert said.

The shopkeeper said she later realised that a car had crashed into the main gate of the shop.

Hibbert said that she saw a man walking from the main gate of the shop towards the side gate. When he was near to the side gate she said that she heard gunshots.

“I bent down and put my hands on my head. The man jumped over a wooden lounge chair near me and ran to the back of the shop. A policeman then came through the main gate and told me that the car that crashed in the gate was a stolen car,” Hibbert said.

Kemesha’s neighbours, were, however, still mystified as to how she could have been mistakenly shot by the police.

“The road is well lit. There is a streetlight across the road from where she fell. She was shot at close range by someone in a police car.

“I saw a short man in a white shirt come out of an unmarked police vehicle near where Kemesha fell. He said there is a shooting and we need back up,” a neighbour said.

Meanwhile, Adassa Blake an elderly resident whose house is close to where Kemesha fell after she was shot, said that her livingroom’s glass window was shattered by a bullet.

“I was sitting on the verandah but got up after 8:00 pm and went into my bedroom to watch the weather report on television.

“I heard a gunshot and came out of my bedroom and went into the livingroom where I saw the shattered window. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, Kemesha – that innocent girl – don’t trouble nobody,” a crying Blake said.