THE Jamaican man suspected to be the primary shooter in last October’s massacre that left four dead and 11 injured in Southwest in Los Angeles (LA) is now in custody, Captain Peter Whittingham of the LA Police Department (LAPD) confirmed yesterday.

LAPD, which has labelled the Jamaican a ‘don’, gave his identification as Marlon St Aubyn Logan, alias ‘John John’, who eluded police for almost eight months, following the bloody clash between two gangs at a party in an underground Jamaican restaurant in that California city.

Reputed Jamaican gang leader Robert Davis, also known as ‘Rodigan’, of Maxfield Avenue in Kingston, and three other men were shot dead, when armed men invaded the birthday celebration on Rimpau Boulevard in the West Adams neighbourhood in Southwest, Los Angeles.

Whittingham, a former Jamaican immigration officer who rose from the sprawling slums of Canterbury, St James, to his lofty position in one of America’s finest police departments, is commanding officer of the Criminal Gang/Homicide Division which hunted Logan.

“It helped that as a Jamaican I understood how Jamaicans operate,” he told the Jamaica Observer in an interview, in which he confirmed that Logan was caught on June 1, 2017, in LA, after a lengthy manhunt made difficult because of the suspect’s many aliases.

“Even though he was known as a don, it took us a while to catch him because he had multiple aliases and we could not find anyone who knew his correct name or who was willing to tell us,” Whittingham said.

Gunfire erupted at Dilly’s Kitchen in the 2900 block of Rimpau Boulevard after two men confronted another man and fatally shot him. A total of nine men and six women were struck by bullets in the firefight as an estimated 50 party patrons ran for cover. The dispute likely arose from a drug deal gone bad, Whittingham was quoted as saying at the time.

He told the Observer yesterday that the gang members had migrated from Jamaica and continued their activities in LA. The search for them was assisted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Jamaican police.

Rodigan was said by Jamaican police to be the leader and financier of the Rat Bat Gang based on Sunlight Street in the lower section of Maxfield Avenue in Kingston. At the time of the incident, it was feared that the killing could set off a fresh round of clashes with Rodigan’s gang and its affiliate Sunlight Street Gang against the rival Raspberry Gang.