Girl, woman among 7 killed in 3 days

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

A day of fam­i­ly fun end­ed in tragedy when four peo­ple, in­clud­ing a nine-year-old girl, were am­bushed and killed while on their way home on Sun­day night.

Po­lice said 26-year-old Asim Arm­strong was dri­ving a red Mit­subishi Lancer, with his nine-year-old niece J’Lay­na Arm­strong and friends Obataiye Lat­iff, 23 and Chel­sa Ed­wards, 20, at around 7.55 pm when they were shot at by men in an­oth­er car along the La­dy Young Road, Mor­vant, near the Shiloh Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Church.

Arm­strong re­port­ed­ly lost con­trol of the ve­hi­cle and crashed in­to a parked car near­by, as the gun­men es­caped. They were among sev­en peo­ple who died over a three-day pe­ri­od, from Fri­day to Sun­day, at the hands of the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

Res­i­dents heard the gun­fire and called the po­lice. Of­fi­cers of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, Mor­vant CID and Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions vis­it­ed the scene. A dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer was called in and de­clared all four peo­ple dead.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors found 30 spent 5.56 shells and 15 spent 9 mm shells at the scene.

At the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives were told to re­turn as no post-mortem had been con­duct­ed on lit­tle J’Lay­na ow­ing to a back­log at the fa­cil­i­ty.

One woman, who iden­ti­fied her­self as Asim Arm­strong’s moth­er and J’Lay­na’s grand­moth­er, spoke briefly, de­scrib­ing the mur­ders as “sense­less killings.”

The woman, who did not give her name, said she was grate­ful for the sup­port of rel­a­tives who vis­it­ed the FSC with her. She added that she was still cop­ing with the mur­ders of her son and grand­daugh­ter and was too dis­traught to speak at length about the in­ci­dent.

“My feel­ings go­ing on and off... I re­al­ly can’t say how it is for me... I can’t tell you how the emo­tions are. I can’t an­swer how I feel about this, be­cause every­body see­ing how it is. I can’t say if it’s good or bad, it’s mad­ness ... it’s mad­ness that’s what this is.”

Oth­er rel­a­tives were seen con­sol­ing each oth­er af­ter leav­ing the wait­ing area, as two re­moval vans from the fu­ner­al home as­signed for stor­age re­moved the bod­ies un­til au­top­sies could be done lat­er this week.

When Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day vis­it­ed the area where the shoot­ing hap­pened, sev­er­al busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing a gro­cery and au­to parts re­tail­er, were open as usu­al.

La­dy Young Road res­i­dent Trevor Charles, who lives op­po­site the scene of the shoot­ing, re­called hear­ing the sound of gun­fire on Sun­day night.

“I was sit­ting right on this same chair when I heard the gun­shots fir­ing right on the cor­ner. When I watched, I see some smoke ris­ing and then about five min­utes af­ter, I see peo­ple com­ing from all around to see what was go­ing on. I very sym­pa­thet­ic and sor­ry for the rel­a­tives of the peo­ple who died be­cause when I went down there the car was there, all those peo­ple whose bod­ies were all over, it’s a sad thing.”

Charles said while the area was gen­er­al­ly peace­ful, in­ci­dents of shoot­ings and mur­ders were not un­heard of in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“To be hon­est, it’s noth­ing new. I saw two men got lick up a while ago, I hear bul­lets al­most every night, some­times from over in Chi­napoo, Mor­vant, so it’s not shock­ing as such, be­cause it’s an area like that.”

One near­by busi­ness own­er de­clined to speak for his own safe­ty but said he hoped the killers could be found and ar­rest­ed.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Laven­tille East/ Mor­vant MP Chris­t­ian Birch­wood said he was deeply shak­en by the in­ci­dent, not­ing he heard of it just af­ter spend­ing time with his own daugh­ter.

Birch­wood said the in­ci­dent was deeply trag­ic and urged his con­stituen­cy to show kind­ness and uni­ty as they cope with such a tragedy. He al­so lament­ed that such spo­radic vi­o­lence con­tin­ued, even as a State of Emer­gency (SoE) re­mained in ef­fect.

“To have some­thing like this hap­pen in Mor­vant is very trag­ic. I want the peo­ple in the con­stituen­cy to know that we have to be strong but we have to hold peo­ple to ac­count and why I say this is be­cause this hap­pened in the mid­dle of an SoE, so one wouldn’t ex­pect this to hap­pen in what you would an­tic­i­pate to be a more height­ened lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty. For this to hap­pen in the mid­dle of an SoE is un­ac­cept­able, so we have to keep the faith and we have to be strong.”

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro last week, the North East­ern Di­vi­sion (of which Mor­vant Po­lice Sta­tion Dis­trict is a part of) ex­pe­ri­enced a 55 per cent drop in the num­ber of se­ri­ous re­port­ed crimes as of April 17th, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

As of yes­ter­day morn­ing, there have been 110 mur­ders, com­pared to 120 for the same pe­ri­od in 2025.