PRIME Minister Dr Andrew Holness on Tuesday announced a $2-million reward for information leading to the arrest of the individual responsible for the April murder of 14-year-old Terona Thomas in Olympic Gardens.

Terona, who lived at Cinnamon Crescent, Kingston 11, was killed during a drive-by shooting in the community. Two men were shot and injured in the incident.

“As I stand here today, we are going to find you. We are going to put cameras on that road, and several others. And I also want to announce that we are going to put up a $2-million fund for the capture and arrest of the [killers of the] 14-year-old girl; I am going to ask the minister of national security to top it up [reward] so that there is a greater incentive, because somebody knows,” Holness said during the commissioning ceremony of a closed-circuit television surveillance project on Olympic Way.

Describing the perpetrator of the murder as a low life beast, Holness said, “That 14-year-old could have been a lawyer, doctor, or teacher. Moments after asking her mother for some money to go to the shop to buy crab — just down the road from her house [she was killed]. The mother went into her pocket and gave her daughter the money with no expectation that some low life beast would come and claim the life of her daughter over some foolishness, over who stole whose gun, and we must have pity and sympathy for these people? We must protest on their behalf? It is time that Jamaica stands up and be definitive. We must stand up and protest for the victims,” Holness said as he announced plans to have cameras installed on off-roads in the Olympic Way area.

“We are going to put cameras on those roads so that the criminals have nowhere to hide. When they think about committing an act on Olympic Way, they will think twice,” he said.

— Jason Cross