Witnesses described chilling events in a statement released by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (PDD) of Jamaica on Wednesday, November 3. The unnamed witnesses recalled the event in the Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Church that left three people dead, including a human sacrifice victim.
On October 17, Sunday, police responded to a report that a person was injured in a small church in Albion, Montego Bay, a resort town in Jamaica. Antony Anderson of the Jamaica Constabulary Force said they also had concerns that the church planned to carry out ritualized killings. “There are cultlike behaviors and a cultlike set-up that we have seen here,” Anderson added.
According to the statement released by the PDD, a Facebook post was made on October 15, Friday, by Pastor Kevin Smith, instructing all members to attend church on October 16, Saturday. On Saturday at 6:00 PM, Smith ordered his followers to “bow down on their knees” so he could judge them. He also asked everyone to cover their heads with something white. The service lasted until 1:00 AM the next day.
On Sunday morning, Smith instructed all church members to throw away “all sodas and fill the bottles with water, as well as to throw away all canned food.” In the afternoon, Smith came back to the church accompanied by Kevaughn Palmer and shouted that he was god in the flesh and that the church is the ark.
While the church members were discarding the items Smith asked to be thrown out, a wine bottle broke. Things started getting gruesome for the church members.
Smith instructed Palmer to cut the throat of whoever was standing in front of the broken wine bottle. Witness A and another person stood in front of the broken bottle. The other person went to the “safe side,” Witness A explained.
Another witness, Witness B, said Smith told him that he needs to die to “enter into the kingdom.” Witness B said he ran outside, with Palmer chasing behind him, and managed to stab him in the back, along with the other person.
Michael Brown, an intubated church member, was told by Smith that he needed to die. “But you will rise again because I am the resurrection and the light,” Smith told Brown before he pulled out his tubes, letting him bleed to death.
Tanika Gardener, who had health issues, was asked by Smith if her blood was clean. “Your blood has to be cleansed. I will have to cut your throat,” Smith told Garnder. She did not object; another church member, Andre Ruddock, cut her throat.
Smith asked Ruddock to cut off her head, saying that “she is a goat, she has to die, she is a sacrifice.”
At the time Gardener was bleeding to death, the police arrived. Certain church members fired at the police. Kevaughn Palmer was killed when charged at the police with a machete. Smith, Palmer, and the rest of the church members were arrested.
Andre Ruddock is currently on trial and is scheduled for a psychiatric evaluation.
Smith and a police escort died in a car crash while being transported from Montego Bay to Kingston.
