Andre' Williams, STAR Writer

Just days after being tagged the main suspect in the brutal slaying of dancehall entertainer Captain Barkey and his paramour Tracy Bennett, the accused, Joseph Kernizan committed suicide at an apartment in Florida on Tuesday.

Information reaching our news team indicates that Kernizan, 42, committed the act while under threat from a combined team of law enforcers that surrounded a Miami apartment on Tuesday night.

According to www.nydailynews.com, Kernizan reportedly shot himself in the head as the law closed in on his first-floor Florida refuge about 11:30 p.m.

The NYPD, based on intelligence, believes Kernizan fatally attacked the mother of two of his kids, 38-year-old Tracy Bennett, and popular entertainer Wayne Hamilton, 50, outside the Holiday Motel in the Bronx last Saturday morning.

THE STAR understands that NYPD detectives tracked the suspect to a two-storey, four-family house in Miami, which was encircled with the help of federal marshals and the Miami police.

Further reports are that Kernizan tried to escape out the back door, only to find the waiting police.

Our news team gathered that Kernizan bolted back inside, after which gunshots were heard moments later from a first-floor apartment.

A .380-calibre handgun was reportedly found near his body, which had a gunshot wound to the head. There was no confirmation if the weapon retrieved was the same used to murder Captain Barkey and Bennett on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, there have been conflicting reports that Captain Barkey taunted Bennett's former lover Kernizan in a 2010 song titled Nah Lef Joe.

Friends of Bennett had said the song made popular by Hamilton was about Bennett and Kernizan. However, long-time friend and performing partner of Hamilton, David 'Wickerman' Taylor, has since refuted such claims.