An­na-Lisa Paul

The al­leged gang-re­lat­ed killing of state wit­ness Jehlano “Lano” Rom­ney on Sun­day night, has left both his fam­i­ly and the com­mu­ni­ty reel­ing, as they grap­ple with the sud­den loss amidst the search for an­swers as to why it hap­pened.

Rom­ney, 30, of Up­per Rich Plain, Diego Mar­tin, was killed around 9.35 pm, whilst at the home of a fe­male friend at Poin­set­tia Dri­ve, off Co­conut Dri­ve, Mor­vant.

The woman, who was shot in the face dur­ing the in­ci­dent, re­mained hos­pi­talised in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion up to yes­ter­day.

Of­fi­cers from the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force re­spond­ed to re­ports of a shoot­ing at the woman’s house and ar­rived to find Rom­ney ly­ing dead on the kitchen floor, bleed­ing from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds about the body.

Rom­ney was the state’s main wit­ness in the al­leged po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing death of 44-year-old PC Clarence Gilkes on April 22 in Diego Mar­tin.

Rom­ney was ini­tial­ly ac­cused of the killing but was lat­er ex­on­er­at­ed af­ter an au­top­sy and bal­lis­tics test­ing ruled that Gilkes died from po­lice gun­fire.

While it was claimed yes­ter­day that Rom­ney had been en­rolled in the Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme and had been man­dat­ed to wear an elec­tron­ic an­kle mon­i­tor, le­gal sources said nei­ther was true.

At­tor­ney Criston Williams, who dealt with the PC Gilkes/Rom­ney case, clar­i­fied, “As far as I am aware, he (Rom­ney) re­quest­ed to be in wit­ness pro­tec­tion but he was not af­ford­ed that op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Short­ly af­ter the shoot­ing, a video record­ing of Rom­ney’s body in a pool of blood was post­ed to so­cial me­dia.

While Rom­ney’s moth­er, Kadaf­fi Rom­ney, and oth­er rel­a­tives vis­it­ed the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, to iden­ti­fy his body, they de­clined to speak when ap­proached by re­porters.

Dur­ing a vis­it to Rich Plain hours lat­er, Rom­ney’s moth­er re­quest­ed time to col­lect her thoughts be­fore mak­ing any pub­lic state­ments.

How­ev­er, his younger broth­er seemed un­af­fect­ed as he stood in the light rain and said, “He was my whole life.”

Iden­ti­fy­ing him­self by his alias Zsaz, he added, “We were twins...just one year apart.”

The 29-year-old re­mained sto­ic as he re­called last see­ing Rom­ney around 4 pm on Sun­day. Hav­ing grown up in Mor­vant, he lament­ed, “We born in the ghet­to and we are liv­ing in the ghet­to once again.”

Ad­mit­ting his broth­er had cho­sen to fol­low a par­tic­u­lar lifestyle, Zsaz con­tin­ued, “I can­not ques­tion my broth­er’s lifestyle. He chose his own and I chose mine.

“I will nev­er ques­tion it and nev­er ask why. I don’t know what bad he did.”

Fol­low­ing Rom­ney’s mur­der, ques­tions arose over how it would af­fect the case in­volv­ing Gilkes’ killing, as Rom­ney was the state’s main wit­ness.

How­ev­er, Rom­ney’s lawyer, Criston Williams, con­firmed that the mat­ter can still con­tin­ue.

Williams ex­plained, “The Ev­i­dence Act was amend­ed and makes pro­vi­sions for the state­ment of a de­ceased wit­ness to be ten­dered in­to ev­i­dence.”

Deny­ing that Rom­ney had been out­fit­ted with an an­kle mon­i­tor as part of his bail con­di­tions, Williams re­vealed, “No, he didn’t have any an­kle mon­i­tor.”

At the time of his death, Rom­ney had filed two mat­ters against the State for false im­pris­on­ment, which both re­port­ed­ly oc­curred in 2020. Williams said it would now be up to Rom­ney’s es­tate to con­tin­ue with it.

Of­fi­cials close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion yes­ter­day claimed Rom­ney’s killing was con­nect­ed to a mul­ti­ple homi­cide in Diego Mar­tin last month in which three-year-old Naz­im Owen was killed.

Owen, Chelsea Julien, Ak­il Keron Gloster and Mar­cus “Markie” Noel were killed when the car they were trav­el­ling in was am­bushed by gun­men and shot up. They were at the time re­turn­ing home from a wed­ding re­cep­tion.