KIRK Thompson — the 21-year-old man charged with murdering his ambitious 18-year-old girlfriend who was bent on pulling her family out of poverty — has been given bail.

Thompson was offered $150,00 bail when he appeared in the Spanish Town Resident Magistrate’s Court, several weeks after Bank of Jamaica employee Amelia Pitterson was found in her one-room Portmore, St Catherine home with multiple stab wounds and her throat slashed.

Pitterson’s life story was brought to the fore a day after with the April 20 publication in the Jamaica Observer of her family’s struggles with poverty and her own drive to break that cycle through rigourous studies and hard work.

Shortly before her murder, Pitterson had made the down payment on a parcel of land, a step toward fulfilling a long-held dream of relocating her mother from the ‘Train Line’ squatter settlement in Gregory Park, St Catherine to a proper home of their own.

Pitterson, who by the age of 16 had passed nine CXC subjects, was scheduled to start her business administration degree at the University of Technology this September.

“She always say, ‘Mammy, we can’t live like this for much longer. We have to move from here and I will have to be the one to break this poverty curse’,” Pitterson’s mother Natalie White-Walker was quoted in the article of April 20.

Pitterson’s body was found sometime after 7:00 am on Thursday April 19, by an older sister, who lives in one of two houses in the yard in Gregory Park.

On the day after the killing, Thompson turned himself into the police, was questioned and released. He was subsequently asked to return to the police station and was then charged with murder.

During the bail application, the court was told, among other things, that Thompson was not a flight risk.

Thompson was offered bail with one or two sureties and ordered to reside in St Mary, away from the area where the crime was committed, pending the outcome of the case.

He is scheduled to return to court on August 7.

Related story:18-y-o’s brutal murder stuns Gregory Park residents

Young O’Gilvie offered bail

OTROY O’Gilvie, son of prominent West Kingston figure Justin O’Gilvie, was offered bail in the sum of $200,00 when he appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court.

Young O’Gilvie, who appeared in court Thursday on charges of kidnapping and extortion, is charged along with another man. However, that man was not brought before the court when the case first came up on Monday because he was scheduled to face an identification parade.

The court was told that on May 17, the complainant who drives one of the trucks belonging to O’Gilvie, did not turn up for work and had the vehicle in his possession.

O’Gilvie and his co-accused, the court heard, went in search of the complainant and found the man in Harbour View, St Andrew.

It is alleged that the complainant was taken to Rasta Lane in Bull Bay in St Andrew where he was allegedly tied to a car trunk and severely beaten.

The complainant’s family was allegedly contacted and told to bring $30,000 to secure his release. The police were called in and a sting operation was set up, the court heard. Both men where reportedly held when the money was being exchanged and were subsequently charged.