Troubled tree

 Veteran Royal Cayman Islands Police Service investigator Marlon Bodden can remember a time not so long ago when West Bay’s Birch Tree Hill Road was a peaceful, quite neighbourhood.  

“It was just an ordinary road,” Superintendent Bodden said. “It’s only in recent years that it’s taken on a reputation.”  

The reputation has not been helped by reports of several gang-related attacks along the strip of Birch Tree Hill between Ed Bush Stadium to the south and Captains Joe and Osbert Road to the north.  

Since March 2010, three men have been shot to death in the area, another stabbed and shot at and another found with a bullet in his leg from a shooting in another part of West Bay.  

Tuesday’s killing of 28-year-old Robert Macford Bush was Cayman’s first gun-related homicide in more than a year. The previous one happened just down the street in September 2010, claiming the life of 20-year-old Tyrone Burrell.  

RCIPS Chief Superintendent John Jones said Mr. Bush’s shooting death was disappointing to police in more ways than one.  

“It’s sad because we felt that we’d reached a milestone last week when we’d gone over a year without a fatal shooting on these Islands,” Mr. Jones said. “We always feared this would happen.  

“It’s a big leap to say this is the reopening of any gang hostilities, we can’t say that. We hope it isn’t.”  

Gang shootings  

Little more than a year ago, gunshots rang out on a September evening along Birch Tree Hill Road.  

When the smoke and confusion cleared, 20-year-old Tyrone Burrell was dead. It was the fifth killing to occur in West Bay during that year.  

According to police, Mr. Burrell’s shooting happened in the same yard on Birch Tree Hill Road where Damion Ming had been shot on 25 March, 2011. Police said Mr. Burrell was known to be associated with people involved in gangs. Other sources informed the Caymanian Compass that Burrell had been an associate of Mr. Ming’s. 

Investigators also said at the time that they thought Mr. Burrell knew what happened in Mr. Ming’s killing six months earlier, but he never took that information to the police and was never identified as a police witness. 

“We believe that Tyrone did have valuable information related to the Damion Ming killing,” Superintendent Bodden said at the time, adding that if the young man had gone to police at the time “we may not be sitting here today talking about another wasted young life”. Mr. Bodden said Burrell would have been protected by the police. 

Other young lives lost in West Bay in early 2010 included 4-year-old Jeremiah Barnes, shot to death at the Hell Esso petrol station. Following Jeremiah’s shooting, Alrick Peddie, 25, Marcos Duran, 29, were also killed in shootings at separate locations. All of those incidents were believed to involve gang activity.  

Since Mr. Burrell’s death, West Bay and the Birch Tree Hill area had been quiet.  

“We had enjoyed a 12 month period without any fatal shootings; now you contrast that with the situation we were facing in the early part of 2010 where we got to a stage where we had to seek assistance from abroad … because of the sheer volume of investigations,” Chief Superintendent Jones said Wednesday. “I’d be the first to accept that robberies we’ve had are at an unacceptable level. But in terms of murders … we’ve done very well.”  

Recent violence  

There were signs the period of peace for the Birch Tree Hill area were ending last week when a 30-year-old man driving a rental car was set upon by two suspects who stabbed him and shot at him. The man survived and a suspect, 40-year-old Ian Duffell, was arrested and charged.  

Mr. Jones said there was no evidence the stabbing attack on Stadium Drive was connected to either the recent killing of Mr. Bush or to Mr. Ming’s and Mr. Burrell’s deaths last year.  

The victim involved in the 8 September stabbing was a visitor to Cayman, but he had been here for a while and Mr. Jones said this was not an instance of a random person being selected for a robbery.  

“As far as we can tell, the stabbing incident … that evolved between two people who were known to each other,” he said. “That’s not a case of someone randomly being picked upon.”  

A second attack from the same night involved a woman outside Dolphin Discovery who was car jacked. Mr. Jones said this incident was also not connected to the earlier gang violence or to Mr. Bush’s shooting on Tuesday. 

“We would appeal … that people remain calm,” said RCIPS Chief Superintendent John Jones. “It’s obviously very concerning to the community of West Bay for violence of this nature to erupt.”  

Retaliation  

Mr. Bush’s family members told the Caymanian Compass they thought the Tuesday night shooting was done in retaliation for an attack in late July that occurred in the vicinity of a West Bay bar known as Club Inferno.  

Mr. Bush was one of three men charged in connection with that incident. Police officers said a man was assaulted outside the club by a group of suspects who struck him on the head with a bottle and threatened him with a firearm. The injured man from the July attack was taken to the hospital for treatment and survived.  

Another man involved in the 27 July attack outside the club had recently been acquitted in connection with the March 2010 killing of Alrick Peddie, 25, in West Bay. However, Mr. Bush – the victim from Tuesday’s homicide – had nothing to do with the March 2010 shooting, police said.  

Irvalyn Bush, Robert Bush’s sister, said she believed the attack against her brother Tuesday was a clear retaliation.  

“Absolutely, I think that’s what it was,” she said. “I don’t know why they really wanted to kill him.”
 

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