Family of Briton murdered in Jamaica seek answers over UK officials' ‘indifference'

The Guardian

2 days ago

The family of a 'generous and loving' British man who was murdered in Jamaica are demanding answers over the British government's 'indifferent' response after the tragedy.
Delroy Walker, from Birmingham, was stabbed to death weeks after retiring to the Caribbean island where he was building his dream home. The 63-year-old charity worker was murdered by a 'jealous' tradesman he employed to help decorate the property in preparation for a family visit in summer 2018.
Dwayne Barton, 32, was jailed for 27 years and his accomplice, Davian Edwards, 33, for 22 years this week after being found guilty of murder after a trial at St Mary circuit court in Jamaica.
Walker, who was born on the island, was 11 years old when he moved to Britain with his parents who were part of the Windrush generation. He worked as a carpenter, builder and a school caretaker but had always dreamed of returning to Jamaica to retire, which he did in November 2017.
Steve Walker, 59, said his brother had found a beautiful seafront house and hired local tradespeople to help him restore it in preparation for his family visiting from Britain. He had been keen to employ people nearby because he had been 'very much about supporting the local community'.
However, the trial heard that the retiree had become involved in a minor dispute with one of the men, Barton, who returned to the property and stabbed him to death as 'payback' in April 2018.
Delroy Walker's murder came weeks before the fatal stabbing of the British retirees Gayle and Charlie Anderson, 71 and 74, from Manchester, and sparked warnings that those returning from Britain were being deliberately targeted. Jamaican police bolstered security in response.
After the sentencing on Tuesday, Steve Walker, a former BBC technician from Croydon in south London, said he hoped the lengthy prison sentences would show that 'Jamaica will tolerate this no longer'.
He said his brother had been a generous and loving man who had been so excited to welcome his family on a trip from Britain scheduled just weeks after he was murdered.
He said: 'We've had justice, which is what we've been striving for since the day his life was taken in that cruel way … [but] it's left an emptiness. I like Jamaica but my brother loved Jamaica. He should be here. I should be sharing these moments and sharing paradise with him.'
Walker's family said they would request a meeting with the British Foreign Office over what they described as the 'indifferent' way his murder had been treated by the high commission in Kingston.
Steve Walker said a UK official had told him initially that the government could not help them because 'your brother's not British, or not British enough, because he had a dual passport'.
'It was shocking to the core and it still shocks me,' he said. 'I felt disgust and upset. It was time when we needed that support.'
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Criminal prosecutions in Jamaica are notoriously slow and it took seven years to bring the killers to trial, despite them being arrested weeks after the murder. Walker's family had requested the British government's help to expedite the process but received 'very little, very late and often nothing at all', said his sister Jackie Ward.
Ward, from Surrey, said she believed the high commission treated the family as not British because her brother had had a dual Jamaica-British passport, even though he had spent most of his life in the UK and his family still live there.
She said: 'If it had been a person from Oxford or Surrey, a white British family, who had been killed, I highly suspect their response and support would have been different.
'They were indifferent about it. It's far from good enough. It's a systemic problem.'
Ward said no British government official had contacted them since the trial and had not attended the court hearings as promised, she said, despite the murder warranting interventions from Jamaica's director of public prosecutions and receiving national media coverage in both countries.
The Foreign Office said: 'We have supported the family since Mr Walker's death and remain available for consular assistance.'