Trinidad: Hit-man and ‘innocent’ wife gunned down

Jamarrie John and Onika Crafton
Jamarrie John and Onika Crafton

(Trinidad Express) The lifestyle of gunman Jamarrie John, 31, caught up with him early Sunday morning when he and Onika Crafton, 34, were shot dead as they slept at her home in Guaico, Sangre Grande.

Found below John’s body was a fully loaded Glock semi-automatic pistol with 35 rounds of 9 mm ammunition.

Investigators said around 3 a.m. residents of the area heard about ten gunshots and immediately called the police.

Officers arrived at the unfinished structure where the nude bodies of the couple were found in the lone bedroom of the house.

These two killings as well as that of a Carenage man brought the murder toll to 93 up to last night.

A team of officers from the Sangre Grande CID and the Region Two Homicide Bureau visited the scene where they carried out enquiries.

The Express arrived on the scene around 1.30 p.m. and met Crafton’s brother, Larry Smith, a woman and another man cleaning up the house where the murder took place.

Smith said Crafton and Smith had been living together for approximately two years and she was the mother of two children, ages nine and 11, from a previous relationship.

“My sister was innocent in all of this,” he said.

With his eyes rimmed with tears he said he and his sister had fallen out over a month ago. “I made up my mind to speak to her this morning as we had fallen out,” he said.

“Right now my nephew and them (Crafton’s children) real sick about this.

Smith said his sister was an ambitious woman who started constructing her own home about six years ago and only last year had saved up enough to plaster the inside and outside walls and planned to complete the structure this year.

 “She used to work at Diana (confectionery) and Serta (mattresses manufacturers) and even though she used to complain about staples getting below her nails while working at Serta she never stopped because she had a goal,” said Smith.

He did not want to speak about Smith.

Police however confirmed Smith was known to them as he was detained in the past on charges relating to narcotics and gun possession.

At the scene someone who asked not to be named said that John, “used to watch people back”.

The police explained this meant John was a killer for hire or a hit-man.

The bodies were taken to the Sangre Grande Mortuary and post-mortem examinations are expected to be done today at the Forensic Science Centre in St James.