‘Him woulda haffi kill me too’ - Father of murdered warder could have been caught in shooting

M ilford Clarke says it will probably take eternity for him to get over the death of his beloved daughter, who was shot by her estranged husband as he chased her yesterday morning.

Correctional officer Rouleene Clarke-Gowans was killed in a murder-suicide along Woodpecker Avenue in the Waltham Park Road area.

Her husband, Patrick Gowans, also a warder, was the trigger man.

THE STAR spoke with Clarke, 70, at his Willow Drive home, where he sat in despair on his verandah in the company of neighbours and other relatives.

Clarke told our news team that he did not take his usual walk with his daughter to the bus stop yesterday.

He said: “This morning (yesterday) she a go a work she say: ‘Daddy, later’, and me say OK dear, be careful. Mi always walk with her go bus stop, enuh, but as me get up out the chair this morning, a spirit say to me ‘sit down’ and mi sit down. So probably if me did go the man woulda shoot me too. Me nah go see him a go to mi daughter with weapon and stand up deh a look, me would a never do that; him woulda haffi kill me too.”

Clarke described his daughter, who was affectionately called ‘Donna’, as one of the most loving children a parent could ask for.

“Anybody inna the community can tell you that Donna is a special person. There is nothing bad I can say about Donna. She is kind and loving, anything you ask her for from she have it, you a get it”, Clarke told THE STAR.

He told our news team that his daughter’s husband was abusive.

Clarke told THE STAR: “What really happen in this situation, she and the husband buy a house in Waterford, Portmore. But the husband have this attitude to beat and him go get a gun now and every minute him draw the gun after her. I leave and go over Waterford and tell the police dem over there and dem tek it weh from him for a little while. I don’t know how it happen but him get it back. That was about two years ago and then now him start to beat her often, so my daughter can’t tek it no more and come here and say: ‘Daddy, mi can’t tek the abusive treatment nuh more, I going to leave’.”

Clarke said that is how she returned to the Waltham Park Road area.

Clarke told our news team: “I told her to make him stay with everything over there and she leave over there. She nuh take no clothes, nothing. All her awards and things she get from Correctional Services, she lef every God almighty thing. A since she come here, she start buy back some clothes.”

The estranged couple shared one child together and counselling is now being offered as she was a prime witness to the incident.

“The child say she a hold him back and say: ‘Daddy no, no no, don’t hurt mommy’ and him flash her off and she say mommy run and him run her down and shoot her in her back. I went and look at her and you can see the bullet hole dem in her back. And him go shoot her in her head, then him kill himself,” Clarke told THE STAR. “I hope to God this don’t happen to anybody else cause up to now I don’t know how I feel, believe me. I don’t know when mi a go get over this.”

THE STAR gathered that Clarke-Gowans worked at the Fort Augusta Adult Correctional Centre, while her husband worked at the Horizon Adult Remand Centre.

They exchanged vows some 15 years ago.