LACOVIA, St Elizabeth — Against the backdrop of recent homicides here linked to domestic violence, including last week’s gruesome murder of 50-year-old Nicole Brown and another case of a mother allegedly stabbing her son, police say they will continue to increase domestic violence interventions in communities.

Police charged Dellode Warren, 39, a resident of Barton Wharf district and Whitehouse, Westmoreland, with Brown’s murder on Sunday, almost a week after he reportedly confessed to strangling her and dumping her body in the Black River, which flows through Lacovia.

Head of the St Elizabeth division, Superintendent Coleridge Minto said that the parish is seeing an increase in murders attributed to interpersonal conflict, most often involving blood relatives or intimate partners.

“In three recorded incidents the victims were killed by their spouse; other cases involved perpetrators who were a brother, son, nephew, or in-law. In addition to homicides, there have been serious non-fatal incidents. Very recently in the division’s southern section of the parish, a mother stabbed her son during a physical altercation, leaving him seriously injured and hospitalised,” Minto said on Monday.

According to Minto, “Since the start of the year 377 people have sought assistance at the division’s domestic violence centre located on the Santa Cruz Police Station compound.

He is urging individuals experiencing conflict to seek professional help.

“As part of a broader strategy the domestic violence team and the division’s Community Safety and Security arm have stepped up public education efforts, visiting communities to provide information on domestic violence and conflict management. More than 40 communities received these interventions in July,” he said.

In relation to Brown’s murder, police said the woman and Warren were living together for almost a year at her mother’s house.

Police said the couple had domestic issues in the relationship, and about a month ago Brown asked Warren to leave the house.

Last Monday, a day after Brown was last seen by her relatives, residents mobbed Warren and accused him of killing Brown. Police rescued him and he was treated and released from hospital before being charged with murder on Sunday.

Minto reiterated that over 60 per cent of the 21 homicides recorded in St Elizabeth are linked to domestic violence compared to eight murders for the corresponding period last year.

In June police linked the murder of 40-year-old Mandeville pharmacy technician Kedecia McLeod, whose body was found in in Pepper, St Elizabeth, to the suspected suicide of licensed firearm holder 50-year-old Maurice Fennell in Brown’s Town, St Ann.

Also in June, police charged 19-year-old Lorenzo Williams for the murder of his brother, 21-year-old Travis Williams, in Stephenson Town near Southfield in St Elizabeth. Police said the teen’s then 14-year-old brother and a 43-year-old woman were also chopped and injured in that incident.

A month later, police charged 38-year-old licensed firearm holder Joseph Finnikin with murder, after his 20-year-old girlfriend Anishka Thompson was shot dead in Hill Top, Parottee, St Elizabeth.

MINTO… St Elizabeth is seeing an increase in murders attributed to interpersonal conflict, most often involving blood relatives or intimate partners