Percival LaTouche, a staunch advocate for the rights of returning residents in Jamaica, has died aged 85.

He passed away at a medical institution last Wednesday about 3:57 am after suffering a series of debilitating strokes, a close relative of LaTouche told Observer Online.

LaTouche had spent over 30 years in the United Kingdom from 1958 until the early 1990s when he resettled in the land of his birth.

He became an advocate for the security of returning residents who were being targeted by thugs after returning to live in Jamaica, and founded the Jamaica Association for the Resettlement of Returning Residents.

In recent years, the murders committed against returning residents have subsided significantly from a high of 20 a year to single digit numbers. However, there was a particularly bloody period during the early 2010s when Jamaican expats who retired in the country after decades overseas faced what a former deputy commissioner called an “extreme risk” of murder.

In 2018, Latouche famously urged Jamaicans not to come home for fear of being killed. In 2018, he reportedly said he had counted more than 200 British, American and Canadian expats murdered in the country since 2000 and had attended 165 funerals in that time.

“It makes no sense to spend 20, 30, or 40 years overseas working hard only to return home for people to kill you,” he was quoted as saying at the time.

He had been reacting to the murder of returning resident, 44-year-old Karen Cleary, whose body was found buried in a shallow grave on her property in Boscobel, St Mary.

He had also lamented that “Jamaica has become a fertile place to commit murder”.

There will be a nine night to mark his passing this Friday, March 28.

– Claude Mills