Each week the Case Not Closed Desk will revisit some of the most intriguing cold cases that continue to baffle investigators. This week we examine the death of Junior Longe. Anyone with information on this or any other case should contact the Crime Desk at 253-4871 (south); 253-4893 (north); 253-4880 (Bridgetown); or the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-TIPS (8477). A reward is given for information that leads to the solving of a crime.
Junior Longe didn’t fit the profile of someone to be caught in the crossfire of any of the feuding gangs.An exemplary worker, from all accounts, the 39-year-old sous-chef was well liked by his friends and those who came into contact with him. But he made a fatal mistake on the night of April 20, Greene Ridley 8/5/10 Date to be put in.2008. That night he died, Junior was in the wrong place at the wrong time.He had moments earlier spoken with his girlfriend Natalie Goring to inform her he would be home “just now”. She took the conversation in the usual fashion and awaited his arrival.On the blockThen came another call soon after. The caller said that Junior, also known as Demus, had been shot while liming on a block with friends at Eden Lodge in St Michael. What happened between those two calls?It was shortly after 8 p.m., and the usual residents and neighbours gathered talking and laughing under the beam of the street light.They didn’t see the car emerging from the shadows until it was too late. The men in the vehicle opened fire on the group, a deadly projectile ploughing into the neck of Junior. He stumbled and fell.The panicky group scattered with one thing in mind – self-preservation. Another victim, Tony Gittens, 31, survived a hit in the left leg, and was treated at and discharged from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH). Longe, sous-chef at The Mews Restaurant in Holetown, St James, was pronounced dead on arrival at the QEH.He never made it back to his Stadium Road, Bush Hall, St Michael home to his waiting Natalie. She was greeted instead with the unsettling news that “Demus just get shoot”. Immediately calls were going out and coming in, and fear started to set in.Sound of sirenBut it was the sound of the siren from the ambulance passing in the distance that sent chills up Natalie’s spine.“I called a friend of mine who lives in the area and asked her if she heard about any shooting. She told me, yes, Tony [her brother] had just been shot in his feet. I called back Demus phone about two or three times and got no response. Then I heard the ambulance passing and I started to get scared,” she recalled in 2008. By now Trevor, Junior’s brother, was on his way to the hospital where he was greeted with the grim news. The sports-loving father of one, who also enjoyed music and work, was gone. “He never missed a day at work. Even if he got called out on his day off he would always go. He was not a person to go to dubs; he was more of a romantic person. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Natalie said. The model employee was lauded by his employer as a dedicated worker from 1999 when he started out as a porter and worked his way to sous-chef for the last three years of his life. His killer or killers remain at large.• antoinetteconnell@nationnews.com
