This month in our Cayman Compass Cold Case Files series, we continue to look into the four murders that marred September 2011. In this next installment, we focus on the killing of Preston Rivers.
Ten years may have passed since West Bay resident Preston Rivers was gunned down near his girlfriend’s home, but for Chief Inspector Malcolm Kay the memory of the teenager’s killing remains fresh.
“He’d been home, having a normal evening with his girlfriend and friends, and they had decided to just pop out into West Bay to pick up some food to bring home, and continue their evening at home. Unfortunately… that evening didn’t continue as planned,” he said as he sat down with the Compass to discuss the case, codenamed Operation Newt.
Serious Crime Review team leader Peter Dean, who is leading the cold case investigation into the murder, said the victim’s tender age was what struck him.
“I’ve got to say, yet again, another sad case of a young man losing his life for absolutely no reason whatsoever. He was 18 years of age,” Dean said.
How it unfolded
Kay said on the night of 17 Sept. he received a call that there was a shooting in West Bay on Andresen Road, off Conch Point Road.
He said a team of officers was dispatched to the area and they arrived to find Rivers’ body.
“He had received three gunshot wounds,” Kay said.
Dean, in outlining the sequence of events leading up to the fatal shooting, said Rivers was ambushed as he left the car when he and his girlfriend returned from their takeout run.
“Preston got out of the vehicle first, he was the front seat passenger, and as he made his way towards the door of the apartment, it would appear one lone gunman came out of hiding and shot him,” Dean said.
He explained that officers believe four shots were fired, with three hitting Rivers.
“He died as a result of these horrific injuries that the firearm inflicted upon him. We did, at the time, have a description of sorts of the person responsible… [The]main thing was that he was wearing a blue stripey top, [and he] seemed to be a younger fellow, and really that was all we got,” he said.
Dean said ballistic evidence recovered at the scene of the killing confirmed the murder weapon was a .38-calibre firearm; that gun was later retrieved at another murder scene which they believe was connected to the September 2011 shooting spree.
He said police received information following the murder, but it did not lead to an arrest or conviction.
Kay said in the days leading up to his murder, Rivers reached out to police, expressing fears that he might be in danger because he had some connections with the gang activity, both through his friends and relatives. He added that those concerns were looked into at the time.
However, Kay said, “unfortunately on this particular occasion, [on 17 Sept.] his worst fears were actually correct”.
Investigations then and now, Dean said, have shown that gang affiliations played a major part in the “sequence of murders that took place in September of 2011”
Multiple murders left many unnerved
Kay said the period around Rivers’s murder – the third of four killings that occurred in quick succession – was a time in his career like no other.
“Having been in the police for 26 years, it was probably one of the hardest things to deal with… I think the murders were coming in every other day… it was completely unprecedented,” Kay said.
He said while those killings were limited to gang affiliations, they still triggered fear in the wider public, and concern for the police as it was difficult to predict when the next incident was going to happen.
“We had put several measures in place, additional patrols, additional firearm officers, and we had additional investigators working… out of a major incident room system that we’ve set up, separate and apart from the police station, to accommodate all the investigations so that any links between them could all be tied in together,” he said.
Dean added, though some time has passed, he is hopeful the team can get the info they need to crack the case.
“Although we did receive quite a lot of information from the public and, like in a lot of these cases, we have theories and we have thoughts about who may be responsible, but it’s all about having the evidence in order for the police to be able to assist the public in bringing these people to justice. We need help.”
Earlier this year, the Coroner’s Court ruled Rivers’ murder an “unlawful killing” following an inquest. The medical evidence presented to the jury stated that the young man’s official cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds, with the shot to the back of the head the fatal blow.
Kay said as an investigator, the fact that Rivers’ case remains unsolved still troubles him.
“It’s difficult to put into words because you never put it to bed. I can only imagine how the family feel, how friends feel, but as an investigator, it never closes and you don’t put it out of your mind,” he said, adding that he’s solved other cases that have led to convictions.
Anyone with information can call the Serious Crime Review Team confidential tip line at 649-2930.
“You sort of file those away because they’ve been solved, but this one, with one or two other investigations that remain open, do stay with me,” he said.
The senior officer said he hopes renewed efforts to solve the teenager’s murder can lead to him finally marking his case file ‘closed’.
“If anybody does have any information, however small they may think it is… it may not be small to us. It might be that one little piece of the jigsaw puzzle that we needed to actually prove what we know, what we suspect,” he said.
Kay added that while Rivers was on a path that may not have been the right one at that time, that should not be held against him.
“Who hasn’t made a mistake?…Maybe he made a few errors in judgement with some life choices, but if he was here today 10 years older, who knows what he might be… being able to contribute to society. He might be a father, an employer, an employee,” he said.
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