THE weekend rains came pelting down as predicted, as if to wash away the blood stains from the tragic northwestern parish of St James, where the savage rape of five females, including an eightyear-old, stirred outrage in the nation last week.

With the murder rate trending down nationally, the parish which is home to Jamaica’s most scenic tourist enclaves has claimed the dubious distinction of being the most murderous police division, if news reports quoted National Security Minister Peter Bunting correctly.

“St James currently is really the most serious division in terms of violent crimes — murder and shooting,” Bunting was reported as saying on a tour of parish communities reeling from gun violence just 10 days ago. “On a per capita basis, St James has more than twice the murder rate of any other parish. It is much worse than Kingston and St Andrew and St Catherine.”

Police Statistics and Data Management Unit reported 86 murders in St James between January 1, 2012 and July 21, 2012. The next highest was the feared North St Catherine division which had 70 reported murders, followed by St Catherine South with 50 murders.

A stark feature of the violence engulfing Jamaica’s fourth smallest parish which was named after King James ll is the brutish, gruesome nature of many of the killings, which have largely been blamed on the deadly lotto scam and gang violence.

Bemoaning the “seeming upsurge in crime”, Delroy Chuck, the man who shadows Peter Bunting in the national security portfolio, last week expressed “shock and alarm at the depravity that has been associated with recent criminal acts”.

Blood-curdling screams of women and children trembling helplessly before monstrous gunmen frequently rend the night, creating lifelong nightmares for many community residents who cower in fear as the lives of their neighbours are being snuffed out.

Murder by the numbers

Following are some of the most troubling murders along a trail of blood that has meandered through St James, littering the parish with the corpses of a reported 171 Jamaicans, topping the St Catherine North division, with 166 murders, between January 2011 and July this year, and still counting:

• June 20, 2011: A disembarking passenger, without warning, whipped out his firearm and opened fire on commuters in a bus which had stopped along the Long Hill, King’s Gate main road. Two passengers died, including a man, Mondale McFarlane, 24, of Pleasant Hill, Hanover, who was on his way to visit his girlfriend and two-month-old child. Four others were injured.

• September 11, 2011: A two-year-old boy, Zachary Campbell, and a man, Dwayne Marzouca, 37, of Irwin were killed when gunmen jumped from a car and fired on a group of people returning from a football match in a tough section of Albion.

The toddler died in his mother’s arms as she made a futile dash for the safety of her grandfather’s house. She was shot twice and one of the bullets exited her body, striking her son in the head, killing him.

• New Year’s Day 2012: Gunmen started the New Year as they ended the old, by cutting down two middle-aged men, execution style, after robbing them in Salt Spring. The gunmen ordered Oscar Peterkin, 59, and Glendon Bryant, 52, to lie on the ground and sprayed their bodies with bullets, giving the parish a bloody start to the New Year. It was the second double murder in two days, following the first, which occurred in Rose Heights in which Michael Nesbeth, 20, and Sharon Lawrence, 39, were killed and five other persons injured.

• January 15, 2012: Violence reached the doorsteps of a politician when Tayon Colomathi, 31, son of St James People’s National Party stalwart Donald Colomathi, died under a hail of bullets in Hampton where he had taken his father to chair a party cluster meeting.

June 2, 2012: Trinidadian school teacher Michelle Coudray-Greaves, daughter of San Fernando Mayor Marlene Coudray, went missing on June 2. Police confirmed two weeks later that the charred remains of a body found in a canefield in the parish was that of the missing woman.

June 23, 2012: Tania Lowe, 37, an apparently well-loved geography teacher at the Adventist-run Harrison Memorial High School, had just returned home from church when she was stabbed to death at Pitfour, near Granville. Frightened neighbours reported hearing loud screams coming from Lowe’s home and later found her dead body in a pool of blood.

July 5, 2012: Three gunmen stormed the Porto Bello residence of gas station manager Michael Small, 51, killing him as he alighted from his pickup truck. The deacon of the Mount Salem Open Bible Church died from multiple gunshot wounds at the Cornwall Regional Hospital.

August 18, 2012: In the early hours of the morning, residents summoned the police after they were awakened by gunshots in separate incidents in the Granville community. Later, police discovered the bullet-riddled bodies of Keith Maxwell, 65, of Violet Close; Peter Cunningham, 34, of Retirement and Ramesh Sutherland, 25, of Gordon Crescent.

August 23, 2012: The stillness of the night in the Green Pond community was ruptured by gunshots which took the lives of three men — Donovan Anderson, 39, Donhue Riggs, 37, and Jermaine Gordon, 22, as they stood outside a shop.

September 1, 2012: The killing of well-known Montego Bay gynaecologist/obstetrician Dr Barry Dixon, 66, shocked even those who had been in denial about the murder wave in St James. Three gunmen gained entry to his bedroom at his Spring Gardens home and shot him dead. They then proceeded to the bedroom of his two sisters who were sleeping on a lower floor and robbed them of cash and other valuables before making their escape.

September 5, 2012: Two pregnant women and an elderly man were among four persons killed in separate incidents by gunmen who went on the rampage in Maroon Town and Granville. They killed Shantell Davis, 19, Ash-Marie Plummer, 36, Alvin Reid, 73 and Easton Chambers, 36. Davis was nine months pregnant, while Plummer was two months on.

Police figures show that the murder tally was consistent with last year when St James recorded 85 murders between January and July, one less than for the same period this year.