Pastors who visited Five Miles in Mount Morland, Sligoville, St Catherine, on Thursday found no residents available to receive counselling after a firefight that killed two police officers and three civilians, the Jamaica Observer reported.<\/p>\n
The visit brought together representatives of the 10,000 Men and Families Movement and the Spanish Town Ministers\u2019 Fraternal. They had hoped to meet people affected by the violence and provide prayer, comfort and spiritual support almost a week after the incident.<\/p>\n
Bishop Rowan Edwards, founder of the movement, and Pastor Dalbert Simmonds, chairman of the fraternal, nevertheless prayed at the location. They asked for protection for the community and for police officers carrying out their duties.<\/p>\n
Edwards expressed sorrow over the deaths of the officers and offered condolences to their families. He also questioned whether a different tactical approach could have been used and called for additional training for officers confronting armed criminals. Those comments represented his assessment of the incident; the report did not establish a finding about the police operation.<\/p>\n
The absence of residents prevented the pastors from identifying and speaking directly with relatives who might need support. Edwards said locating affected family members would be their next step.<\/p>\n
Simmonds said the purpose of the visit had been to comfort people at the place where the shooting occurred. He urged residents to seek counselling and appealed to communities to prevent criminal elements from occupying their spaces.<\/p>\n
With no one available to meet them, the pastors extended an invitation for people close to the incident to contact a church or pastor for assistance. Simmonds identified his church in Lauriston and the Lighthouse Assembly as places through which support could be sought.<\/p>\n
The Observer named the officers killed as Corporal Trevoy Shaw and Constable Devony Rose. The three civilians fatally shot were Errol Hussy, Malik Hussy and Javon Cougal. The report also said a 10-year-old girl who was shot remained in hospital with serious injuries.<\/p>\n
The outreach ended without the face-to-face counselling the pastors had planned, but their offer of help remained open to affected families and residents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pastors offered prayers, but found no residents to counsel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jamaica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}