Kolbe death row inmate Gilroy Wade, 26, who was found guilty of the murder of Ozrin White on July 24, 2000, and sentenced to death, was shot and killed sometime around 3:00 this afternoon at the Hattieville Prison.
Wade had been shot once in the left side of the back of his head, said relatives who saw his body at the morgue this evening.
According to a police report late today, police visited the prison and saw the body of a male prisoner lying in an area near the maximum security area of the prison. Prison officials reported that sometime around 3:00 p.m. they received information of a shooting incident in the said area, and discovered the body of the inmate.
Prison personnel also handed over to police a .38 revolver along with a homemade silencer, the gun believed to have been used in the murder.
Prison officials claim they had made several searches after being tipped off that a weapon had been smuggled into the prison, but all searches had been futile before the Wade homicide.
Wade’s relatives are upset, especially his mother, Avis Williams, who told Amandala that they never got word from the Kolbe CEO or anyone from the department about Gilroy Wade’s death. It was a call from an inmate to her son that informed the deceased’s family of his death.
According to Williams, up until press time she still has not been informed by prison officials what really happened with her son’s murder.
On Monday of this week, Williams said, she had visited her son and while she was there, an inmate with whom her son had had an altercation, had a visit from his brother. Knowing that her son and that other inmate had their differences, she decided to cut short her visit with Wade. That was the last time she saw him.
While incarcerated, Wade had received several death threats, reported his mother.
Gilroy Wade had been in isolation for sometime and had subsequently been placed in “super max.”
A family friend with whom Amandala spoke, said that a prison inmate informed her that Wade met his death after leaving his cell #27 and was passing cell #30 when he was shot.
Two of the inmates of that cell have been detained by police, said the close family friend.
Wade was only 17 when he was found guilty of the 2000 murder of White.
He was tried for murder along with Oscar Mendez (now deceased after being shot and killed last year) and Glenford Baptist.
They had been tried before Justice Wilfred Elrington. A Supreme Court jury on November 10, 2001, found them guilty of murder and they were sentenced to death by hanging. Our sources say Mendez and Baptist were later freed on appeal.
In 2006 the Privy Council commuted Gilroy Wade’s death sentence to life imprisonment. Wade has insisted that an attorney take up his case, because he maintained his innocence.