Cop kills four in St Mary murder-suicide

Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter

Three Hills, St Mary

SEVENTY-NINE-year-old Rachel Brown had become fearful her son-in-law Wayne Llewellyn could kill her and members of her family.

Wednesday evening Brown reportedly telephoned one of her church sisters to say she felt the angel of death was near.

“About 4, she called me and said, ‘Dem threaten wi enuh. Wah mi ago do Sister Hylton?’ I said to her, ‘Don’t stay there. Go and report it at the (police) station and don’t sleep there’,” a member of the Retreat Seventh-day Adventist Church told The Gleaner.

According to the church sister, the elderly Mrs Brown was defiant.

“She said she is not going to leave the house. She said she was going to take it to the Lord in prayer,” the church sister added.

Llewellyn, a detective corporal who has sworn to protect and serve, had gone to the edge after Joan, his wife of 13 years, walked out on him. The couple, along with Joan’s 16-year-old daughter Jorjhan Flynn, had moved from Ocho Rios, St Ann, to Manchester where Llewellyn had been transferred.

But Joan, who had reportedly had enough of an abusive relationship, moved back to her parents’ house, along with her daughter, nearly two months ago. She was in the process of filing for a divorce.

hot pursuit

Llewellyn, who seemed to have taken his marriage vows ’til death do us part’ too far, went in hot pursuit. Some residents say he was seen on one occasion sitting in the dark outside the Browns’ residence in Three Hills, St Mary.

Before daybreak, the angel of death pounced on the unsuspecting family, raining bullets in the house and leaving a trail of death. Llewellyn had barged into the Browns’ home through the back door and shot and killed Mrs Brown, her husband 73-year-old Voldy Brown, his brother-in-law Fitzroy Townsend and 16-year-old Jorjhan Flynn, his stepdaughter.

He also shot his 40-year-old wife who was up to press time hospitalised.

The policeman, still bloodthirsty, went a few metres, along the narrow dirt road in the laid-back community, to the house where relatives of the Browns live but they had been alerted to his coming and locked him out. It was at that point, he pumped a bullet into his own head and collapsed on the veranda where he died.

Shock and grief was glued to the faces of the residents of the community who camped out in nearby yards as investigators combed the crime scene.

As the crime-scene investigators moved into the family dwelling, scores of neighbours who braved the sweltering mid-morning sun converged on the property to get a glimpse of the bodies.

When the investigators emerged with the body of the elderly Mr Brown, his bloodstained grey hair and stiff corpse were too much for many to bear.

“Whoa! Jesus, whoa!” bellowed Verona Davis.

“Look how dem do Missa Brown. Murder a Three Hills. God of Isaac, God of Moses, God of Israel, almighty God, lightning and thunder fi wicked people,” she screamed amid a chorus of groans and wails.

One man climbed a tree in order to take a close look at what residents began calling the ‘slaughterhouse’.

But not long after finding a resting spot, the frail limbs gave way to his weight and he came crashing down into the crowd of onlookers.

Even though they were not blood relatives, nearly all of Three Hills claimed the Browns as family. Lurline, a Cayman Islands native who now has been a neighbour for about a year, was among those struck by disbelief.

“They are very nice people, quite helpful, I had no problem with them. As next door neighbours, we all lived as one big happy family. If we have something, we shared with each other,” Lurline told The Gleaner.

Damion, a member of the Retreat Seventh-day Adventist Church, was also deeply touched.

“You could talk to Sister Brown about anything. She was like a mother to me,” Damion said.

He said he had known the family for several years and had developed a “very close” relationship with them.

Damion said Llewellyn was “jovial” and never looked like the murderous type.

“I didn’t even know he was like that. Me and him sit down and we talk, but I never know he had that in his intention,” Damion said.

Chukudi Okike, pastor of Retreat Seventh-day Adventist Church, said he had to seek medical attention yesterday after he got the news.

He said Mrs Brown was a very active member of the church who sang on the choir. He said she ministered to Mr Brown and caused him to get baptised about a year ago.

Meanwhile, Reverend Roy Wickham, chaplain for Area Two police, said “the whole situation would have caused numbness, disappointment and shock”.

Said Wickham: “It is a sad day, it is very disappointing and the fact is that Mr Llewellyn, what we know of him while he was in Area Two, was not a man who talk a lot … . We are all disappointed as to what has happened.”

Three Hills too was disappointed. One resident wished Llewellyn could be made to see the horror and grief he had caused and then taken out of his misery.

The sight of the elderly people being taken from their home and laid on the concrete was too much for others who walked away, some crying.

And, as if the heavens had decided the bodies had been pelted enough by the sun, the sky darkened and the clouds shed their tears.

“God nah sleep,” Davis said at the onset of the first drop of rain.

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