The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG and JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporters

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net,

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

CHATERE Wells was just a friend catching a ride to work when she was murdered yesterday.

Sandra Smith, the mother of Dino Smith –– the man killed with Wells on Prince Charles Drive –– told The Tribune: “She just call him to give her a lift to work, and he just leave from home, clean he tennis and he gone to give her a ride.”

The broad daylight killing of Smith, 30, and Wells, 27, meant 10 people have been killed in the last 13 days, with someone murdered on all but three days since December 22. Smith was killed on his birthday. 

Police see no connections between the killings, according to National Security Minister Wayne Munroe, and authorities have not said whether they are gang-related.

The killings at an intersection not far from the Doris Johnson Senior High School prompted a flurry of police activity and congested traffic on the typically bustling Prince Charles Drive.

 Bystanders stood in shock, covering their mouths as bodies were removed from a grey Nissan Cube. Even a seven-year-old boy received minor injuries after shattered glass struck him when his car was damaged.

 Ms Smith believes her son was the victim of a retaliatory killing. He was on bail for attempted armed robbery and previously beat firearm possession and manslaughter charges.

 He was found guilty of firearm possession last year, but the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction, finding that a magistrate erred by using his statement as evidence against him. His girlfriend, Annette Johnson, is serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence. She testified that before police took her and Smith into custody in 2022, Smith asked her to hide a gun. She used the restroom in police custody, and officers later found a .40 pistol and 13 rounds of ammunition in the toilet tank.

 Smith was also a suspect in a $1.5m robbery of a bank security car last year, but was released without being charged. He was shot shortly after leaving custody. Chief Superintendent of Police Chrislyn Skippings said he was questioned but refused to give information about who shot him.

 Ms Smith claimed her son became careful of the company he kept after that incident.

 “He don’t really keep friends,” she said. “He just keep his circle small and try to stay from around people, but it look like everywhere he go, people are just targeting him until the end now. They end up killing him.

 “From when they put up saying about this money thing, it’s just like his life is no more because they take it now.”

 She said Smith was a father of three.

 She is familiar with pain: one of her sons is in jail, and another was previously murdered.

 Smith was all she had.

 “That’s all I had left to help me through all these situations and things I going through,” she said. “That’s the only person who was there for me, honey, to do things for me. Nobody else I had. I had no one to do anything for me.

 “You know how much time I talk to him? I say ‘Dino, stay from around these people. Watch out for these people. I never know today was gonna be the day, on his birthday, they was gonna kill my child like a dog like that. It hurt me.”

 “I’m hurting so bad. Lord, I can tell you that. Honey, I can’t take no more. I can tell you truth, and whoever do that to my child, I hope they catch him and bring justice for my son.”

 Ms Smith said her son called her after leaving home a minute before he was killed.

 She said not long after the murders, gossip about the murdered pair and an unattractive picture of Smith circulated on social media, hurting the family.

 Tavallia Dean, a hairstylist and friend of Wells, said the woman was positive and unproblematic. She said the two bonded working in a beauty salon. She said Ms Wells was a nail tech who wanted to elevate their business.

 “Anytime we get to talk it’s always about business,” she said. “There was never any negativity or anything, just straight-up business and friendship and the memories that we had before.

 “Even though everybody has to die one day, I just feel someone like that shouldn’t have to die that way.”

 According to CSP Skippings, the victims were travelling west in their Nissan Cube shortly before noon when a gold colored Nissan vehicle pulled alongside them.

 Three men with firearms got out of their car and fired multiple gunshots at the Nissan Cube.

 Three other vehicles, a white Nissan Cube, a blue Suzuki Splash, and a red Mazda Demio, were also damaged during the incident, according to CSP Skippings, who said the suspects then fled west on Prince Charles Drive. Their car was later recovered in the Hanna Road area in southeastern New Providence.

 A scared and shocked woman driving the Demio involved in the incident published a video showing the aftermath of the incident.

 “Oh my God, the people look like they dead,” she cried in the one-minute clip.

 The double homicide came less than 24 hours after a murder in South Beach. Four people have been killed in 2024.