Dana Malcolm 

Staff Writer 

#TurksandCaicos, May 2, 2024 – Four months into the year and just one day before the new Commissioner of Police was due to debut in the job to the Turks and Caicos, the murder tally was thrust into double digits with two killings recorded hours apart.

A Duke Street shooting took the life of Omarion Gardiner around 3 am Sunday, April 21 in Grand Turk and just over three hours earlier, a shooting in Providenciales, minutes to midnight.

As residents transitioned into the new week criminals attacked a home in the Bight slaying Anlinco John Lightbourne. Police kept it brief, omitting details of the incident in their first report, sent to the media around 4:30 a.m. but by 4 pm Sunday they had confirmed the men’s identities and that the attacks were “targeted.”

Soon after news broke of that shooting, Wilkie Arthur, Magnetic Media Court Correspondent, was in the Bight speaking to relatives of the deceased man, confirmed to be a young father.

”He’s born in 1994, same as my daughter.”  Arthur revealed, putting the young man’s age at no more than 30 years old. As for what exactly happened during that nighttime attack, relatives are trying to puzzle it out themselves.

Lightbourne was reportedly home at the time of the attack.  A loved one who was in the home described two men with handguns, one weapon described as considerably larger than the other who entered through both doors at the home, one from the front and the other from the back.

Shots were fired and Lightbourne reportedly ran in an attempt to avoid his attackers before being hit by more shots. The sound of those explosions brought other relatives running, one of whom described the scene to Magnetic Media.

No blood in the bedroom, but obviously a tussle is what the relative saw, signs of some kind of ‘trauma’ is how he described the messy bed, with sheets scattered as if someone had jumped from them quickly.

The victim didn’t even make it down the stairs of his apartment, collapsing on the porch. When Arthur arrived on the scene after daylight Sunday, bloodstains had soaked into the hardwood of the porch, alongside a plant overturned in the nighttime melee.

“I don’t like that, he ain’t deserve that,” a distressed and tearful family member said to us.

As police were processing that scene it was mirrored in Grand Turk.

Photos from the Duke Street crime scene show investigators crouching outdoors over the body of Omarion Gardiner, identifying different spent shells around the body.  Once again an ambush is suspected by residents and confirmed by police who had to search along the street to find Gardiner’s body.

Gardiner is said to be extremely young but his age remains undeclared by officers.

Investigations now continue as the country prepares to welcome the man in charge of it all, Edvin Martin, Police Commissioner of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Martin who previously served in Grenada as top cop was hired following the exit of Trevor Botting, Former Police Commissioner.

The two murders marked numbers 10 and 11 for the year.