Third person charged in UTech student murder case

A third person has been charged in connection with the February murder of St Catherine security guard and engineering student Michael 'Bupsy' Patterson.

The third accused is Melvin Chisholm, who has been charged with misprision of felony. The other accused are Barbara Gardener and Tevin Austin, both from Walderston, Manchester.

Gardener and Austin are charged with murder, conspiracy to murder, possession of a prohibited weapon, unauthorised possession of ammunition, using a firearm to commit a felony, robbery with aggravation, larceny of a motor vehicle, receiving stolen property, and unauthorised access to computer data.

When the matter came up for mention in the St Catherine Parish Court on Friday, the trio was remanded to reappear in the Corporate Area Gun Court on June 26, 2026.

Patterson was a third-year engineering student at the University of Technology, Jamaica. 

Allegations are that about 12:30 p.m. on February 23, 2026, Patterson’s decomposing body was discovered in a canal near the National Irrigation Reservoir in Hartlands, St Catherine.

Police were summoned and, upon arrival, the partially submerged body of the 39-year-old Ensom City resident was retrieved from the waterway. The scene was processed.

An intensive collaborative investigation was launched, and Patterson's motorcar was later discovered in Manchester, which led to the arrest and charging of Gardener and Austin.

Further investigations led to Chisholm’s arrest and charge.