Mayor of Portmore Keith Hinds has called on the church to help to fight the 'evil' that had encamped around the Newland area.

He encouraged the churches in Portmore, whether they were Pentecostal, Church of God, or Seventh Day Adventist, to have one week of church revival in the Newland area to rid the community of the bloodshed that gunmen have caused in that part of Portmore.

power of God

Mayor Hinds said while everything else failed, the power of God is still in control. "We are under siege, I need help in Newland and I want all of these men and women of God to unleash 'Matthew chapter 28, verse 19' on Newland. There are some young men in the Newland area that have forgotten that they were born of a woman and there is a God. You (the churches) just need to go out there and reclaim that area in the name of Jesus," he said.

Mayor Hinds was making this plea while attending the 26th anniversary of Power of Faith Ministries on Sunday in Portmore Town Centre.

Young men from different gangs have put Newland residents under siege in recent weeks and killings have been going unabated with the situation reaching boiling point over a week ago when a 90-year-old woman was killed after gunmen burnt her house in an area called Hardware Lane.

gunmen

Reports were that about 10:50 p.m., on November 14, 90-year-old Inez Brown, who was blind and bedridden, was at home when gunmen invaded Hardware Lane and opened fire on three houses. Upon leaving they set ablaze Miss Brown's one-room house.

The fire brigade and the police were alerted and one unit from the Waterford Fire Department responded and carried out cooling-down operations. The charred remains of the senior citizen was removed from the destroyed building.

A PORTMORE STAR source said that the thugs wanted the woman's great-grandson, but didn't get a hold of him and torched the elderly woman instead.

Meanwhile, this newspaper was reliably informed that a man was killed mistakenly by gunmen who came to an area of Newland looking for men of 'interest' about two weeks ago. When thugs realised they were at the wrong home they were about to leave when the man inside the house ran and was cut down in a hail of bullets.