Hitman in Campbell-Collymore case to know fate next month
Published:Saturday | February 20, 2021 | 12:13 AMTanesha Mundle/Staff Reporter
Wade Blackwood, the contract killer who admitted to spraying a cab with bullets, killing Simone Campbell-Collymore and taxi driver Winston Walters three years ago, will know his fate on March 11.
The 24-year-old’s sentencing, which was scheduled for yesterday in the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston before Justice Lorna Shelly-Williams, was forced to be postponed as the social enquiry report had not been completed.
He was subsequently remanded.
Last month, Blackwood pleaded guilty to two counts each of murder, illegal possession of firearm and ammunition in relation to the January 2, 2018 fatal attack at the entrance to Campbell-Collymore’s Forest Ridge apartment complex on Stanley Terrace in Red Hills, St Andrew.
A post-mortem revealed that Campbell-Collymore was shot 19 times and died from “multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen, with injuries to the lung, liver and right kidney”.
Walters was shot five times and died as a result of a gunshot wound to the head, according to a post-mortem report cited in court documents.
In footage of the double homicide, which was captured on a surveillance camera, Blackwood was seen approaching the front passenger side of the vehicle and firing into it multiple times.
The confessed killer had given police a caution statement five months after the murder, detailing his role in the contract murder.
According to Blackwood, two of his associates had approached him and asked if he wanted to be a part of a killing mission that they were going on. When he declined, he was threatened into taking part, he said.
On the day of the murder, he said that the men came for him on two motorcycles and they drove to the foot of Red Hills Road, where they stopped to get gas.
After getting a call that Campbell-Collymore was heading in their direction, the men were joined by two other men, also on a motorcycle, and they all followed behind the taxi in which the woman was travelling.
On reaching the entrance to her apartment, Blackwood said that one of the men got off the bike and started firing into the driver’s side of the taxi and he fired into the passenger’s side.
He recalled hearing Campbell-Collymore screaming as the glass windows shattered around her.
After the incident, he said that he handed back the murder weapon – a Glock pistol – to his friend and burned the clothes he was wearing.
Blackwood is among five men charged in connection with the double murder. Among those charged is Campbell-Collymore’s husband, Omar, who, along with his co-accused, is scheduled to return to court on March 24.