A vacationing personal trainer from the UK was present in a “pool of blood” at a villa in Jamaica — fatally shot 12 times in what police said was an ordered hit.
A hooded gunman attacked Sean Patterson, 33, of London, as he sat with a friend by the pool on the One Love Guest House in Montego Bay, the Times of London reported.
“We suspect it’s a contract killing emanating from Britain,” Deputy Police Commissioner Fitz Bailey said, adding the victim had an “extensive criminal record” within the UK for violent offenses including firearms and medicines.
Authorities don’t consider Patterson, who arrived in Jamaica on Dec. 29, went there in reference to any criminal activity. Bailey said a hitman was apparently hired to kill him on the resort city.
“This appears to be a part of what I consider to be a transnational organized crime group,” Bailey said.
In line with local reports, a 34-year-old man has been taken into custody.
Patterson went to Jamaica together with his friend, Shane Cameron, 30, a London construction employee, with whom he booked a five-night stay on the hotel, based on the news outlet.
The chums reportedly went to a concert the identical day, meeting Oshane Richards, 34, who had been deported from the UK to Jamaica in 2013 on drug charges.
It was not immediately clear if Richards was the suspected shooter.
A day after the concert, Patterson and Richard were sitting by the pool on the resort in Bogue Hill, St. James when a gunman opened fire, hitting Patterson in the pinnacle and chest. He was rushed to Cornwall Regional Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, based on the Times of London.
“I’ve lost my baby. No mother should need to bury her child,” his mother, Lesley Wright, 63, told the Day by day Mail, adding her son had gone to Jamaica to satisfy his father’s family for the primary time.
“He’d been having the time of his life. He sent me a photograph of himself basking within the sunshine and a video of himself leaping off a cliff into the ocean,” Wright said.
“Sean has family in Jamaica through his father. They’re very well-to-do over there and he’d hoped to satisfy them. He never got the prospect,” she added.
Patterson’s dad, Alan Patterson, told ITV News London he was still attempting to “process” news of the killing.
“We’d like justice, we would like justice, he deserves justice because he was anyone,” the grieving dad told the news outlet.
“His name was Sean Alan Patterson, loved by all people in West London. In all places he went he was loved,” he said. “He just had that mannerism that just took people over they usually took that light away from us.
“Sean, rest in peace, please do son and whoever is responsible allow them to pay because we’re all grieving — his three brothers, his 4 sisters, his mum, his grandad,” Alan added.
Patterson leaves behind a fiancee, with whom he had been together for 13 years, the UK’s LBC reported. The couple were planning to begin a family together.