St James – Granville Residents Protest after Police Shooting

St James, Jamaica (McKoy’s News) – Granville Residents Protest: Angry residents from Granville in St James on Saturday blocked several sections of the roadways into the community and staged a massive protest over the police fatal shooting of a man in the area on Saturday morning.

The Granville police reported that shortly after 5:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 2, 2017, a team of officers armed with a search warrant went to a house located along Gordon Crescent in Granville. The police went on to say that on reaching the location, they were greeted with gunfire from inside the house. They were forced to take evasive action and so returned the fire.

During the exchange of gunfire, a man who was later identified as 26-yr-old Kurtis Cooke, unemployed of the said address, was shot. A 9mm semiautomatic pistol loaded with several rounds was taken from his body he was later transported to the Cornwall Regional Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Meanwhile, family members of the deceased and other community members have refuted the fact that Cooke was actually shot and killed during a shootout. One family member told our news team that Coke came home drunk late Friday night and went straight to bed. She further stated that when the lawmen came to the yard, they broke a window to the house and gained entry. They then dragged Coke from the house and shot him in cold blood.

The controversial shooting sparked a whole day’s demonstration which saw residents using huge stones, tree trunks, old refrigerators, old motor vehicles and tires to block several sections of the main road leading to the community.

Large fires were also lit at a number of locations along the roadway and a heavy contingency of police officers had to be deployed to the scene. A team from INDECOM are now in the community carrying out investigations.