The Spanish Town Hospital in Jamaica is now under 24/7 police patrols after gunmen threatened to kill staff over the weekend, a day after robbing staff and beating a doctor on the premises. The death threats also came after gang members opened fire on a police station and communities in the Spanish Town community.
National Security Minister Dwight Nelson said the round-the-clock police guard would remain in place as long as necessary and warned criminals who continue to target the hospital that “they will do so at their own peril."
He ordered the beefed up security after gangsters threatened to shoot up the hospital on Saturday night.
A day earlier, armed men invaded the facility about 2:30 a.m. and robbed staff of cash, cellular phones and jewelry. A doctor was physically assaulted.
A similar robbery occurred at the same hospital in July last year.
Minister of Health Rudyard Spencer has condemned the latest attack on the hospital.
“There is a pattern emerging that we do not like and we wish those criminal minded persons would allow suffering people to access medical attention and our staff to do their work without fear of incidents such as this,” he said, adding that the staff were left traumatized.
Spencer said he hopes the perpetrators will be swiftly brought to justice and urged members of the community to assist the police in their investigations.
Police at the Spanish Town Police Station escaped unhurt after members of a gang attacked the building last Friday night, using a power outage as cover for their gun assault in the old capital. In reaction to what it described as “vicious and unprovoked attacks”, the Police High Command said lawmen remain undeterred.
The shooting spree in Spanish Town began around 7 pm as armed men whom police said were from the Clansman gang fired shots at the station and on mobile patrols in the area during a power outage that affected the parish of St Catherine, of which Spanish Town is the capital and largest city.
When power resumed, the gunmen reportedly fled to nearby communities where they fired shots indiscriminately.
Police and soldiers were deployed to those areas and brought the situation under control about three hours after the first gun siege began. Fortunately, no one was injured in the shooting spree.
