A 17-year-old boy is now in custody after he was accompanied by his parents to the police station in relation to the shooting of a one-year-old girl in Denham Town, Kingston, last Wednesday.

The Kingston Western police, following investigations, had called for the youngster to turn himself in before 6:00 pm last Thursday evening.

“He is a juvenile and he is in custody. He turned himself in with his parents. The investigation is not complete yet. We have to do some more work until about next week,” commanding officer of the Kingston Western Police Division Superintendent Michael Phipps told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.

According to the police, the teenager allegedly entered a section of the community called Bread Lane about 7:55 pm and “fired shots wildly”. The child, who was being held by a parent, was shot in the leg. She was taken to the Bustamante Hospital for Children where she has been undergoing treatment.

A day later, another infant fell victim to gun violence in the community when one-year-old Romario McCain was shot during a clash between thugs and members of the security forces about 7:00pm on Thursday. Later, another baby was shot.

In the meantime, Assistant Commissioner Clinton Laing of the Criminal Investigations Branch (CIB) told the Observer that incidents similar to what occurred in Denham Town recently, where thugs wreak havoc in communities and inflict harm on children, do not see protests and roadblocks mounted by residents because they may be fearful, or may be protecting the criminals. Residents are, however, eager to demonstrate if the police are involved.

The last such demonstration took place last Wednesday when residents of Greenwich Town took to the streets to block roads and protest against the fatal police shooting of Oniel Chambers, who was killed by police while they were rushing to respond to a shooting in a neighbouring community.

The residents claimed that Chambers was killed in cold blood, but Superintendent Kirk Ricketts, who heads the St Andrew South Police Division, in which Greenwich Town is located, said Chambers was shot in response to a perceived threat to the group of officers after he pulled a firearm on them.

Said Phipps: “It is clear that they have a strategy employed, where once they believe it is the police involved in a killing, you will find them making a whole lot of outcry. But when it is coming from a citizen to a citizen within the community they tend not to say much. And I think that mostly they do this because of fear.”