CHRISTIANA, Manchester — Police say the man who was killed at the gate of a school here on Friday was on bail, having been charged with murder in the shooting death of a 14-year-old boy four years ago.

The man, who police and relatives identified as Cuthbert Lambert, otherwise called Jerome, 27, was shot dead in a reported drive-by shortly after 8:00 am just as he dropped off his five-year-old stepdaughter at Christiana Moravian Primary and Infant School.

The school is located beside Christiana Police Station to which Lambert had been reporting in keeping with the terms of his bail for the murder of the teen.

When asked if police have linked the incidents as a possible motive, a source said “A friend a kill friend.”

A police source said Lambert was charged in relation to the December 2, 2020 murder of 14-year-old Ricardo Richards, otherwise called Deshawn Ashley, during a drive-by shooting in the community of Brockery near Christiana. The incident also resulted in Ricardo’s 17-year-old cousin being hospitalised.

Ricardo had just finished driving lessons with his father when tragedy struck.

At the time of that murder, a relative of Ricardo said that he was behind the steering wheel, as his father had been teaching him to drive. The relative said a car was behind them, so Ricardo was driving slowly.

“As him stop out deh so, at the shop, dem pass him a come out and turn, but him never did a pay dem any mind, and [dem] come back down and just start shoot up the car,” the relative added.

Ricardo’s father is said to have exited the vehicle to go to a shop just before the shooting.

A police report at the time said that about 8:20 pm, Ricardo was sitting in the driver’s seat of a Honda Accord motor car, while the other teenager was sitting on the bonnet of the car on the roadway, when they were pounced upon by gunmen travelling in a Toyota Axio motor car, who opened fire, hitting them several times.

The distraught relative had told the Jamaica Observer at the time that several of their family members had been murdered in Spanish Town over a period of time.

Ricardo lived in the Corporate Area, but was reportedly staying with relatives for Christmas in the Manchester north-eastern community.

Police believe Ricardo’s father, Lennox Ashley, 37, was the intended target of the 2020 gun attack. Ashley was killed almost two years later on March 18, 2022 in Brockery.

In the past week, four people were killed in Manchester, including two in Christiana, two days apart.

On Friday, People’s National Party aspirant for Manchester North Eastern Valenton Wint said the situation is “deeply troubling”.

“That is not how we are accustomed to solving our differences. In less than three days we have had two murders. We really have to take charge of this town. I know the police are making every effort to keep Christiana as a quiet and law-abiding town, but for some reason criminal elements are finding themselves in this town and they are wreaking havoc,” he told journalists near the crime scene.

“We really have to be our brother’s keeper and so we have to start looking at the strangers who are coming into our town. We have to report them to the police, because these persons who are coming in are bringing violence into the town. We want Christiana to return to the peaceful town that we are accustomed to be. This can’t be good. This is really a very sad time in north east Manchester,” he added.

Leecent Wallace, principal of Christiana High, which is across the road from Christiana Moravian School, said the shooting was traumatising for the school community.

“It is really disheartening and stressing to come out in the first week of school to see what is happening in the Christiana community; it is really unprecedented. We have never seen the likes of this kind of crime and violence in this area and so, as you can see clearly, the parents are concerned,” he said as worried parents descended on the primary school while it was on lockdown.

“… It is really rough and we know the condition of trauma that the children have to go through just to see an incident like this unfold right in front of them,” added Wallace.