NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Deputy Commissioner of Police Clayton Fernander has confirmed 22 murders were recorded in The Bahamas last month.
This makes March 2022 the deadliest month on record for the country as the most murders ever recorded in a single month was 21 in May 2012.
At a press briefing today, Fernander said 11 of those cases have been solved.
Drugs, gang violence and the emergence of new, organized gangs in the Grove area have largely been attributed for the bloodshed.
Fernander says the man who was shot dead while standing by a vehicle in Hollywood Subdivision, off Cowpen Road, last night was not the intended target.
He said the victim who was using the vehicle was not the owner, who is believed to have been the intended target and is “known to police”.
There have been 43 murders in The Bahamas for the year so far, according to Police Commissioner Paul Rolle.
Responding to questions from the media, Rolle said while there have been reports analyzing on the uptick in murders; police are more concerned with preventing these killings than the statistics of those incidents. He said drugs, retaliation or “street justice”, and gang violence can be attributed to many of the recent killings.
Continuing the upward trend observed late last year, murders for the first quarter of this year have once again sharply risen compared to the same period the year prior.
There was a total of 73 murders in 2020 — the lowest on record in 15 years.
There were 95 murders in 2019, a four percent increase over the 91 murders in 2018 — the lowest in almost a decade at that point.
There were a total of 119 murders last year, compared to the 73 recorded the year prior — a 63 percent increase.
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