{"id":971,"date":"2017-12-20T21:45:19","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T21:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=971"},"modified":"2017-12-20T22:54:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T22:54:31","slug":"slaying-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=971","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Slaying\u2019 Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><em><strong>Two killed hours apart in St. James<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>T<strong>his Christmas will not be a festive one for at least two St. James families, whose loved ones were murdered hours apart.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dead are 21-year-old Donte Ricketts of Westgate Hills and 23-year-old Ricoy Smith, also known as \u2018Bigga\u2019 of Tenement, which is located along the Salt Spring main road in the vicinity of the clinic.<\/p>\n<p>The men were killed hours apart as gunmen continued their rampage throughout the murder-stained parish, inching the tally of victims up to the 320-mark with less than two weeks remaining in the calendar year.<\/p>\n<p>Ricketts, who celebrated his birthday just hours before (December 17), was gunned down in the middle class community of Irwin Meadows in the wee hours of Monday morning.<\/p>\n<p>According to police reports, just about 2 a.m., Ricketts arrived at a house in the Irwin community, where he had reportedly gone to drop off his girlfriend when armed thugs ambushed him and opened fire.<\/p>\n<p>He was struck several times to the head and chest.<\/p>\n<p>His bullet-riddled body was found slumped over the steering wheel of the black Toyota Allion he was driving.<\/p>\n<p>Unconfirmed reports are that more than 30 spent shells were found at the scene.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, the seemingly never-ending gang feud causing unease in Salt Spring again escalated on Tuesday morning, leaving a man dead and three others wounded.<\/p>\n<p>In that case, Smith was shot and killed by unknown assailants.<\/p>\n<p>Information reaching the <strong>Western Mirror<\/strong> is that Smith was among four persons sitting at a shop in Tenement when the incident took place.<\/p>\n<p>According to reports from the Montego Hills police, just about 8:28 on Monday morning, Smith and the three were at the shop adjacent to the community clinic when they were pounced upon by armed men travelling in a motorcar.<\/p>\n<p>The men opened fire at the group, hitting four.<\/p>\n<p>Smith died at the scene while the others were taken to hospital where they were admitted in serious but stable condition.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two killed hours apart in St. James This Christmas will not be a festive one for at least two St. James families, whose loved ones were murdered hours apart. Dead are 21-year-old Donte Ricketts of Westgate Hills and 23-year-old Ricoy Smith, also known as \u2018Bigga\u2019 of Tenement, which is located along the Salt Spring main [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[18,21,19,20,31,30],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-crime","tag-jamaica","tag-montego-bay","tag-murder","tag-st-james","tag-western-jamaica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":979,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions\/979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}