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'People are going to die'

A Police officer stands guard outside the property in which yesterday's shooting took place.

A Jamaican man is lucky to be alive after unknown gunmen fired several shots into his Pembroke home in the early hours of yesterday.

The victim of the attack claimed the incident was just the latest in an escalating number of confrontations between Jamaicans and Bermudians.

And he warned that more people could get hurt unless Police moved swiftly to stop the violence from spiralling out of control.

"If the Police don't do something about this swiftly, it will get to a point where people are going to die," he said.

The attack took place on Middle Terrace, off Friswells Hill, some time after 4.a.m.

"I was at home sleeping and two of my friends were in the front room asleep when I heard someone knock lightly on my door," the man, who asked not to be named, said.

"I jumped up and peeked through the curtain on my kitchen door because I wasn't expecting anybody."

And, according to the man, before he could move away, glass panes of the door were smashed.

"Glass shattered everywhere, and I ran back into the house to get out of the way," he said. "Then, almost instantly, all of the windows to my house were being smashed at once. Obviously, more than one person was there."

The 33-year-old man said he immediately called 911, but no sooner than the dispatcher answered, shots rang out.

"They had to have heard the shots," he said.

The man said that one of the assailants tried to enter his home via one of the broken windows, but one his friends was able to thwart his attempt by hitting him on the leg with a baseball bat.

He said bullet holes in his home remained where the assailants fired. The father-of-one said he was thankful to be alive: "If I hadn't moved, they would have shot me in the chest."

The man said that as the assailants ran away, he could hear one of them saying, "give me the gun, give me the gun".

When asked whether the incident was the result of an ongoing turf war within the drug trade between Jamaicans and locals, the man adamantly denied this.

But a Police insider disagreed, saying that the recent spate of violence in Pembroke was drug related.

The Royal Gazette reported in October how drug officers planned to work with the Jamaican Association to combat the flow of narcotics coming into Bermuda from the Caribbean country.

The majority of alleged importers arrested at the airport in recent months have been Jamaican.

The victim of yesterday's shooting dismissed the claim that the violence was drug related.

."I doubt that strongly," he said.

"People think that everybody who hangs on the corner (Pear Tree) is dealing drugs but that isn't true. If 50 Jamaicans hang there, the majority are not doing anything illegal.

"We are always playing cards or dominoes. We like to congregate."

In fact, the man said, he believed the shooting stemmed from a feud on Court Street which took place on Sunday night.

According to him, one of his friends came to him and said he had been punched in the mouth and robbed of his chain by two Bermudian men known to frequent the area. As a result, several men began throwing bottles at each other and a large crowd gathered in the street. The man said although no Police attended the incident, they drove by as the crowd was dispersing.

"Since I knew one of the Bermudian guys in the area. I went over to him and tried get him to tell his friends to be cool. There was no need for this to be happening," he said.

Then, he said, a man unknown to him walked up to him and punched him in the mouth after telling him that he hated all Jamaicans. The man required hospital treatment and received several stitches to his lip. Because of the initial incident on Court Street, the man said there have been several retaliation attacks on both Bermudians and Jamaicans in the Pembroke area. One resulted in several Jamaicans being injured after being pounced upon in a Devonshire home by at least six locals, the man told The Royal Gazette.

"Everybody says they don't like Jamaicans, but why?" the man questioned. "We didn't come here to war with anybody. We didn't come here illegally. The Government let us here so we deserve to be protected just like everybody else.

"How many people is this going to happen to?"

While he said he is not afraid to live on the Island and that he intends to move back into his home once repairs are made, the man said if Jamaicans remain victims of senseless abuse, he is considering leaving the country.

"Or else I might retaliate,"he said.

The man also said that word is spreading to Jamaica about the treatment of Jamaicans in Bermuda and it will come to a point where Bermudians will be moving targets in Bermuda.

"Jamaicans are being treated unkindly here, so Bermudians will end up being treated the same. Even the innocent," he said.

And if the present climate in Pembroke does not cool down, the man said there will be a lot of blood to be cleaned up.

"People are going to start taking things in their own hands," he said.

When contacted by The Royal Gazette Police spokesman Dwayne Caines said the Bermuda Police Service takes attacks on all residents of the Island seriously.

"This includes members of the Jamaican community," he said. "We are in the early stages of communication with the leaders of the Jamaican community to see what we can do to bridge the divide."

However, Jamaican Consul Winston Laylor declined to to publicly comment on the shooting. He told The Royal Gazette he would not speak until he had been notified of the incident.

At press time, The Royal Gazette was told five men were in Police custody helping Police with their inquiries.