It was an incident that rocked the nation.

On October 25, 2021, a car carrying four people spun out of control on the Linstead Bypass in St Catherine. Three of the passengers were policemen, one of whom died on impact.

The fourth passenger was a man at the centre of one of Jamaica’s most chilling and bizarre criminal investigations: Kevin Ontoneil Smith, the self-proclaimed prophet and alleged mastermind behind human sacrifice rituals inside Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Ministries in Albion, St James, on October 17, 2021.

Ordained a minister of the gospel at just 17 years old, Smith quickly climbed through the ranks of his faith community and was later ordained national evangelist for Canada by his bishops. By 2011, he had returned to Jamaica with the title “Dr” and re-established himself as a spiritual leader ready to rebuild his empire of faith.

As a pastor, Smith often spoke of an “ark”, a name he gave to the physical building of the organisation now deemed to be a cult. His first loading of the ark was in March 2021, just a week after Jamaica confirmed its first COVID-19 case.

Seventy congregants were told to pay $100,000 each for entry into Smith’s ark where they slept on concrete floors and barely had enough to eat. That first boarding of the ark ended without bloodshed but it set the stage for something much darker.

On October 17, Smith made his final Facebook post, a cryptic message to his congregants, calling for the second boarding of the ark.

“The ark is loading now! 123 Albion Road. Leave immediately dressed in white. PCC (Pathways Christian Cathedral) registered only now!” the post read.

What congregants believed was a three-day convention quickly turned into a nightmare when two members of the church were killed during a ritual involving human sacrifice.

Taneka Gardner had her throat slit while Michael Brown, suffering from kidney failure, had his medical tubes ripped out by Smith and bled to death.

The chilling night ended with a tense stand-off between the Jamaica Constabulary Force and some church members. A third congregant, Kevaughn Palmer, was shot dead by the police as they entered the building, while another of Smith’s followers was stabbed, shot in his back and an attempt made to cut his throat during the mayhem.

The result? Forty-two church members were detained, 14 children placed in State care, and Smith, the self-proclaimed “His Excellency”, was taken into police custody.

The incident left many Jamaicans in shock and disbelief, particularly those who had known Smith as a promising man of faith.

“I know for me it was really quite devastating because it’s someone who I knew and I had no idea that it had gone into that kind of extreme, and it’s on the other side of the island so I never heard too much of what was going on. So it was really quite devastating and disappointing, needless to say,” Reverend Merrick “Al” Miller, chairman and founder of Whole Life Ministries, told the Jamaica Observer.

Reflecting on his early interactions with Smith, Miller said there were no immediate warning signs.

“He started out, to the best of our knowledge, like any other church leader and developing church leader… I hadn’t seen him in the last four or five years, but then you begin to hear a couple of things and say, ‘careful here’, but I didn’t know it to be anything going off in that kind of area at all,” Miller explained.

“But this is why we all have to be careful and we have to be observant in our interactions with others, because once we begin to see where pride begins to rise and dominance on money and on pleasure begins to override life, it begins to be the cues that, ‘Hey, be careful here. Is there another spirit that could be operating that one needs to be sensitive to?’” Miller added.

For Merlene Lewin, who lived close to Smith’s church, the news was not as shocking.

Lewin, who often interacted with Smith, said she visited his church once and immediately noticed red flags.

“I sat down at the back and watched how when Kevin was coming in, they laid like a rug when he stepped out of the car and he walked around the church. And they clapped from the minute he stepped out of the car, then he goes into the office, put down his things and come back inside the worshipping area,” she recalled.

According to Lewin, Smith’s church operated under rigid financial rules with congregants being fined for late attendance, improper attire and Bible rentals.

“He started telling them he knows who and who came to church late last Sunday and how much they have to pay… And the least offering you can pay to Kevin is $500 Jamaican. And that is for, I think it’s for not carrying your
Bible to church with you…Can you imagine? That’s how devious that man was,” she told the Observer.

Describing Smith as a “manipulator”, the Albion resident said the cult pastor had a way of drawing people in.

“He hacks with people to get people into him. He’s very nice. He’s intelligent. He speaks nicely. He always has something good to say about somebody he just met. And he describes the person to you and say, ‘You maybe know them, you know, ask them about me. I treat them good.’ But it’s what he does to take them in,” she shared.

Recounting the deadly raid of the church, Lewin said gunshots interrupted a television programme she had been watching on the night of the 17th.

“When I looked through the window [over at Smith’s church], I saw, like when somebody threw a stone in a pigeon coop and you see the pigeon flying out. That’s how I saw people jumping across the fence. And I said, ‘What the hell is going on?” she told the Observer.

Lewin said she watched as police and soldiers surrounded the building, shouting for the congregants to come out. As the chaos unfolded, she later observed the church members, in white gowns, being loaded into waiting trucks. Eventually, she saw Smith being removed from the church grounds.

“He was in… a shorts. No shirt on. And them just take him and put on the handcuff pon him and put him in because he was having attitude with them. He didn’t look remorseful. He was telling them what? ‘Jehovah is going to strike them dead,” she recalled.

Smith was in custody for less than two weeks.

But in an even more chilling twist, Smith, who was believed to be a prophet by some of his followers, made his final prediction. On October 25, 2021, he told the now deceased Constable Orlando Irons that the cup of tea he was drinking ahead of their journey from St James to Kingston would be his last.

Smith also declared that the blue Toyota Corolla they were travelling in would never reach the country’s capital and that he himself would die that day.

Shortly after, tragedy struck. While Smith was being transported from Freeport Police Station in St James to the Criminal Investigations Branch headquarters in downtown Kingston to be charged, the very blue Toyota Corolla carrying him and three policemen crashed. Smith and Constable Irons both died on impact.

Constables Chevon Gordon and Ryan Harrison, who survived the crash, later testified that the cult pastor had held on to Harrison’s left shoulder, pulling him after shouting in the car that he wanted to die in Bog Walk, St Catherine, where he was from.

Autopsies confirmed that both men died of multiple blunt force injuries, and a coroner’s inquest later ruled that Smith had caused the crash, effectively determining his death to be a suicide and clearing the lawmen of wrongdoing.

Smith was posthumously charged with two counts of murder, two counts of wounding with intent and illegal possession of a firearm.

The cult pastor’s rise and fall was shocking for the country. But Rev Miller believes the impact on the church fraternity was less severe than many may assume.

“I think all incidents like that always have some effect on the Church, at least temporarily… because people begin to question and say, ‘There goes the Church again and the negatives in it.’ And that’s just part of the reality. It is what it is,” Miller shared.

View Part 1 of the Jamaica Observer documentary ‘Cult Pastor Kevin Smith: Dead or Alive?’ on the Observer’s YouTube channel. Part 2 will be released on Sunday, October 26, 2025.