East Portland Member of Parliament, Dr Lynvale Bloomfield, was found murdered at his home in Passley Gardens in the parish on Saturday morning.
Bloomfield, a second-term MP, was, at the time of his death, a member of the opposition People’s National Party (PNP). He was 59.
The medical doctor is the third PNP member in five years to die while serving as Member of Parliament.
In August, 2014, Roger Clarke, then minister of agriculture, died after a medical procedure in the United States. And South East St Mary MP Dr Winston Green, collapsed and died at his home in August 14, 2017.
It is rare when high-ranking political officials are murdered in Jamaica. In 1980, tough-talking PNP candidate of St Andrew East Rural Roy McGann and his policeman bodyguard, Acting Corporal Errol White, were killed by policemen in Gordon Town Square a day before nominations opened.
McGann’s replacement, Lloyd ‘Perry’ Stultz, was soundly beaten by Joan Gordon (later married Webley), who in recent years became a former executive director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority. The JLP, with its popular slogan, ‘Deliverance is Near’, swept the election.
In 2008, Chairman of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), Douglas Chambers, was shot and killed.
In 2010, the nation was shocked by the murder of former Member of Parliament (MP) Dr Neil McGill. The detectives suspected three men who attacked the former Western St Mary MP and a female friend on Friday night in the placid community of Bottom Albion in the parish.
Edward ‘Ted’ O’Gilvie, the hard-nosed permanent secretary in the Ministry of Construction, was murdered by gunmen at the gate of his Havendale home on June 16, 1977. At the time, the 47-year-old O’Gilvie was conducting an audit of a housing project in the east Kingston community of McGregor Gully.
Four persons were arrested for O’Gilvie’s death, including Weston Dyer, superintendent for special works at the construction ministry. Three men were also implicated.
