The main sus­pect in the mur­der of vet­er­an court re­porter Bar­bara Gayle was ar­rest­ed by po­lice late Wednes­day, af­ter he was found hid­ing in bush­es in the cen­tral parish of St Cather­ine.

The Ma­jor In­ves­ti­ga­tion Di­vi­sion of the po­lice force is lead­ing the probe.

The po­lice re­port­ed ear­li­er Wednes­day that their in­ves­ti­ga­tion was mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress af­ter Gayle’s 2018 grey Mer­cedes Benz, which had been stolen from her home, was found in a heav­i­ly veg­e­tat­ed area in the parish.

Act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Christo­pher Phillips told re­porters that the in­trud­er’s method of en­try was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed thor­ough­ly.

Phillips de­scribed the mur­der as “hor­ri­ble”, re­veal­ing that Gayle had mul­ti­ple stab wounds to the right side of her neck and a wound to her fore­head.

Her body was dis­cov­ered in­side her home in the parish by a neigh­bour around 10 am (lo­cal time) on Tues­day.

She was last seen sit­ting on her front porch con­vers­ing with a man, about 3:30 pm on Mon­day (De­cem­ber 16, 2024), neigh­bours re­called.

The in­ter­ac­tion be­tween Gayle, 77, and the man—whose iden­ti­ty had not been made pub­lic up to press time—was cap­tured on door­bell cam­era footage.

Her mur­der has sent shock waves not on­ly across the me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty but in oth­er ar­eas of so­ci­ety.

Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness de­scribed the killing as sense­less and has asked the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to en­sure that jus­tice is served swift­ly in the mat­ter.

The Ja­maican Bar As­so­ci­a­tion (JAM­BAR), in com­ment­ing on the tragedy, said the pres­i­dent and Coun­cil of JAM­BAR deeply re­gret­ted Gayle’s death.

“Ms Gayle was well-known for her com­pelling court re­port­ing and ded­i­ca­tion to the Ja­maican le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty. Her re­ports on le­gal pro­ceed­ings have earned her a Jour­nal­ist of the Year award, and she was al­so the re­cip­i­ent of the Press As­so­ci­a­tion of Ja­maica Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice Award and the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Me­dia Prac­ti­tion­ers Re­gion­al Award,” the As­so­ci­a­tion said in a state­ment.

“She is re­mem­bered fond­ly by all mem­bers of the le­gal com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing at­tor­neys-at-law, judges, and court staff. We ex­tend our heart­felt sym­pa­thies to her fam­i­ly, friends, and col­leagues. May she rest in peace,” JAM­BAR said.

Mean­while, the Press As­so­ci­a­tion of Ja­maica (PAJ), in part­ner­ship with a phil­an­thropic sup­port­er, is of­fer­ing a J$6 mil­lion re­ward for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest of the per­son(s) re­spon­si­ble for Gayle’s mur­der.

The PAJ, along with this anony­mous sup­port­er, has al­so joined the rest of Ja­maica in con­demn­ing the bru­tal mur­der of the 77-year-old.

“The si­lenc­ing of the voice of a jour­nal­ist, in­ten­tion­al­ly or col­lat­er­al­ly, is an at­tack on Ja­maican so­ci­ety. It is of deep­er sig­nif­i­cance when the jour­nal­ist mur­dered is some­one like Bar­bara, who for more than 50 years faith­ful­ly shared with the Ja­maican pub­lic the in­ner work­ings of the jus­tice sys­tem through the pages of the Glean­er news­pa­per,” the PAJ said. —KINGSTON, Ja­maica (CMC)