WATCH: Elderly man gunned down a day after cousin
WESTMORELAND, Jamaica — Maurice Parkinson has always disliked Fridays that fall on the thirteenth of the month and he had good reason as that’s the day he lost his left arm in a fight. It was chopped off sometime in the 1980s. Today, Friday, May 13 in a cruel twist of fate, the 86-year-old farmer from Brighton in Little London was gunned down at his house.
He was killed a day after his cousin, Kenroy Parkinson, was murdered by gunmen as he slept at his house in the Retirement area of their community. The police, who believe the two murders are connected, say they have not yet identified a clear motive but says they are following strong leads.
It appears the elderly man was killed as he filled buckets with feed for his goats. Residents heard what sounded like gunshots and called the police who arrived to find his body.
“Him never wah guh out on the 13th; Friday the 13th is not a good day for him,” said a tearful Eugene Lewis, whom Parkinson raised as his son. “It sad, it sad man,” he said.
He struggled to understand who could have seen a one-armed, 86-year-old man as a threat.
“Yuh really kill wah man that age! What kind of heart you have?” he asked the unknown assailant.
He had shared a few laughs with his father the night before, he recalled, his face showing a flicker of a smile before grief once again took over.
Stephen Parkinson, another of the deceased man’s sons, told OBSERVER ONLINE they were both at their house when the unthinkable happened.
“I was here and I heard about three shots. I went to the bushes, by the time I got back around [the entrance to the yard] the cops were there,” he said.
He is visiting from the United Kingdom. By early afternoon, he was packing up his belongings to move out of the community.
“My father gets along with everyone, this is a pain,” he said, seemingly still in shock.
A man who said he and the elder Parkinson had been friends said the deceased would never hurt anyone. The man, who asked not to be identified by name, said when he saw his friend’s body he assumed he had died from a heart attack as he had been ailing for some time.
He remembered Parkinson as kind and hardworking.
– Kimberley Peddie