In Jamaica: Crippled 80-year-old pastor murdered

(Jamaica Observer) – An elderly clergyman was brutally murdered yesterday, while mourners at the church that he had served for years awaited the arrival of his son, also a pastor, to officiate at a funeral service in Race Track, Clarendon.

The mourners while waiting to hear the sermon of Rev Samuel Anderson’s son however, found out in a gruesome way about the cause of the delay, as news broke that the elder Anderson had been found at home with his throat slashed.

Anderson, who family members said was in his 80s, was ill at the time of the incident and was unable to walk, after suffering a stroke several months ago.

There were limited details of the murder, as police gave nothing away yesterday, but Anderson’s daughter-in-law Rose Anderson said that family members and friends of the slain man were told about the murder while they were at church.

“I was at church and got the news that they break in the house and killed (stabbed) him,” a distraught Anderson told the Observer.

“He can hardly move around by himself. He has to uses a stroller, so everybody is confused right now,” she added. “It’s just unbelievable because he has been living here for years and is so good to everybody. We don’t know why somebody would do something like this,” she said.

Anderson’s illness had kept him from normal pastoral duties at the International Evangelical Mission Ministries Church, located just a stone’s throw away from his house, but it was evident that he continued to command the respect of his flock – young and old – many of whom wept