4 | TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
world
For a day, at least, everyone was on their
best behavior when the cameras were
on, eager to present a show of bonhomie
after so many previous meetings ended
in discord.
But behind the scenes at the annual
gathering of some of the world’s leading
powers, President Trump still found
himself at odds with his counterparts on
Sunday over issues like trade, climate
change, North Korea, Russia and Iran.
Ever so gingerly, as if determined not
to rouse the American’s well-known
temper, the other Group of 7 leaders
sought to nudge him toward their views
on the pressing issues of the day, or at
least register their differences — while
making sure to wrap them in a French
crepe of flattery, as they know he
prefers.
It was far from clear the messages
were received, or in any case at least
welcome.
Like other presidents, and perhaps
even more so, Mr. Trump tends to hear
what he wants to hear at settings like
this, either tuning out contrary voices or
disregarding them. Through hard expe-
rience, other leaders have concluded
that direct confrontation can backfire,
so they have taken to soft-pedaling dis-
agreements.
Even Trump favorites like Boris John-
son, the populist new prime minister of
Britain, was treading carefully. On Sun-
day, Mr. Johnson expressed qualms
about Mr. Trump’s trade war with China,
but he appeared to take pains not to of-
fend the easily offended president.
As the two met for the first time since
the new prime minister’s installation a
month ago, Mr. Trump said none of the
other leaders in Biarritz had expressed
concern about his guns-blazing trade
war.
“No, not at all,” he said. “I haven’t
heard that at all, no. I think they respect
the trade war.” He added: “The answer
is, nobody has told me that, and nobody
would tell me that.”
But Mr. Johnson proceeded to tell him
exactly that, while characterizing it oh-
so-deferentially as a “faint, sheeplike”
dissent. “We’re in favor of trade peace
on the whole, and dialing it down if we
can,” the prime minister said.
For his part, Mr. Trump largely stuck
to diplomatic niceties, refraining from
hate-tweeting the other leaders and
leaving aside his caustic complaints
about their military spending, economic
policies or even French wine. He did not
repeat his aides’ criticism of France for
focusing the meeting on “niche issues”
like climate change and African devel-
opment rather than the global economy.
While the president relishes con-
frontation, he tends to avoid conflict in
person, saving his vitriol for long-dis-
tance social media blasts. No one can
say how the remainder of the meetings
will go, or what will happen after he
leaves. But everyone seemed deter-
mined to avoid the sort of blowup that
marred last year’s Group of 7 meeting in
Canada, when a stormy Mr. Trump re-
fused to sign the final communiqué and
lashed out at the host, Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau.“Thus far, this has been really a great
G7,” Mr. Trump gushed on Sunday, “and
I want to congratulate France and your
president because they have really done
a great job.”
The lunch he had with President Em-
manuel Macron was “the best hour and
a half I’ve ever spent with him,” he said,and the dinner on Saturday with the
other leaders “was fantastic.” And
Prime Minister Johnson, he said, was
“the right man for the job.”
Still, even by Mr. Trump’s own ac-
count, the dinner did include a “lively”
discussion about his desire to invite
Russia to return five years after it was
expelled from what was then called the
Group of 8 for annexing Crimea through
force of arms. The other leaders have re-
jected doing so until Russia reverses its
intervention in Ukraine, saying it would
reward aggression.
As host of next year’s Group of 7 meet-
ing, to be held in the United States, Mr.
Trump could theoretically invite Russia
to attend as an observer, but he said he
had not made up his mind about that yet.
“I think it’s advantageous,” he said. “I
think it’s a positive. Other people agree
with me, and some people don’t neces-
sarily agree.”
The dinner discussion on Saturday
night also focused on Iran, an issue on
which Mr. Trump broke with Americanallies by abandoning the 2015 nuclear
deal with Tehran. Mr. Macron, who has
tried to resolve the dispute, emerged
thinking he had a consensus to convey
to Iran: that the leaders agreed it should
not have a nuclear weapon or destabil-
ize the region.
But when Mr. Trump was asked about
that on Sunday, he looked blank, as if he
did not recall such a conversation.
“No, I haven’t discussed that,” he said.
Within hours, the Iranian foreign min-
ister was making a surprise visit to Biar-
ritz, invited by Mr. Macron, while Amer-
ican officials maintained a grim silence.
The president likewise found himself
striking a different note than Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan regarding
the recent string of short-range missile
tests by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-
un. Mr. Trump brushed them off, saying
that while he was “not happy” about
them, “he’s not in violation of an agree-
ment.”
By that, Mr. Trump meant that Mr.
Kim had not violated the understandingthe two leaders had when they first met
a year ago in Singapore that North Ko-
rea would not test long-range ballistic
missiles or nuclear explosives.
But while Mr. Trump may not care
about short-range missiles, Mr. Abe
does, since they can easily reach Japan.
He pointed out that the recent round of
tests “clearly violates the relevant U.N.
Security Council resolutions” and called
them “extremely regrettable.”
Still, as the two agreed on principles
for a new trade pact, Mr. Abe, too,
sought to avert a rupture with Mr.
Trump.
“I would like to make sure that we —
meaning, myself and President Trump
— will always stay on the same page
when it comes to North Korea,” he said.
“Ultimately, we’re always on the same
page,” Mr. Trump agreed.
In his inaugural encounter with Mr.
Trump as peers, Mr. Johnson demon-
strated that he had learned from the dif-
ficulties his predecessor had with the
American president. Even as he spokeout on the trade wars, Mr. Johnson was
careful to first heap praise on Mr.
Trump.
“Look, I just want to say I congratu-
late the president on everything that the
American economy is achieving,” Mr.
Johnson said. “It’s fantastic to see that.”
Having dispensed with the compli-
ments, he noted his country’s experi-
ence on trade.
“The U.K. has profited massively in
the last 200 years from free trade and
that’s what we want to see,” Mr. Johnson
said. “We don’t like tariffs on the whole.”
Mr. Trump took it in stride, but could
not restrain himself entirely from pok-
ing back.
“How about the last three years?” he
said, challenging Mr. Johnson with a
smile and referring to Britain’s anemic
economy of late. “Don’t talk about the
last three. Two hundred, I agree with
you.”
Mr. Johnson laughed and left it at that.
Any further disagreement would wait
until the cameras left the room.NEWS ANALYSIS
BIARRITZ, FRANCE
BY PETER BAKER
To placate U.S. president,
registering their policy
positions in flattering tones
A delicate dance for G7 leaders
Group of 7 leaders and their spouses gathered before a dinner Sunday at the summit meeting in Biarritz, France. President Trump has largely stuck to diplomatic niceties, so far refraining from tweeting about other leaders.ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES
The leaders have learned that
direct confrontation with Trump
can backfire, so they have taken
to soft-pedaling disagreements.that did not explain how the weapon
wound up in Jamaica decades later. Or
how the authorities could prevent the
next Briana from arriving.
Drawing on court documents, case
files, dozens of interviews and confiden-
tial data from law enforcement officials
in both countries, The Times traced a
single gun — Briana — to nine homi-
cides in Clarendon, a largely rural
parish in Jamaica where violence has
spiked in recent years.
Jamaica’s gun laws are relatively
strict, with fewer than 45,000 legal fire-
arms in a country of almost three mil-
lion.
But it is awash in illegal weapons.
In Jamaica, the killings are rarely
driven by enormous profits. The drug
trade has fallen from its heyday, orga-
nized crime has been fractured and
most of the historic kingpins have been
killed or imprisoned.
Instead, the guns in Jamaica are often
used in petty feuds, neighborhood beefs
and turf wars.
FROM NORTH CAROLINA TO THIN AIR
Johnnie Ray Dunn, a farmer, walked
into a North Carolina gun store in the fall
of 1991 and purchased a 9-millimeter
Browning.
That’s where Briana’s paper trail be-
gan — and ended.
President Ronald Reagan had signed
a bill that prohibited the creation of any
sweeping national gun registry five
years earlier.
The National Rifle Association lob-
bied heavily for the bill. Underpinning
the effort was a warning that still res-
onates with many of the law’s support-
ers today: that a national registry would
enable the United States government to
keep track of gun owners and crack
down on their right to bear arms.
So when Mr. Dunn’s gun showed up in
Jamaica, linked to a series of homicides
from 2015 through 2018, no one could fig-
ure out how it got there.
Mr. Dunn died in 2011, according to a
local newspaper obituary, and is not
considered a suspect in the gun’s path to
Jamaica.
Because Jamaican officials cannot tell
how handguns like the 9-millimeter
Browning entered their country, they
struggle to shut down the smuggling
rings that fuel the nation’s violence.
All they know is that, more than 20
years after being sold in North Carolina,
the handgun became one of the most le-
thal in Jamaica, the tool of a one-eyed
gangster named Hawk Eye.
The gangster, whose real name is
Samuda Daley, got the nickname as a
boy. He saw poorly out of one eye, and
after an unsuccessful surgery left it cov-
ered in a milky film, his alias was born.
Mr. Daley was a product of violence.
As a child, a relative said, his mother
was stabbed to death by his uncle.
By ninth grade, he had dropped out of
school to start working at a sugar fac-tory. He joined the Gaza gang, a clique of
young men who had grown up together
in Clarendon.
They began by hanging out, not fight-
ing, his family said. But in the crucible of
poverty and desperation, where small
conflicts can turn deadly, they ran afoul
of a similar group, the King Street gang.
On Sept. 19, 2015, 24 years after Mr.
Dunn purchased the gun, a Jamaican
man named Okeeve Martin was killed
with an unknown 9-millimeter Brown-
ing. There was no money or territory at
stake, residents said. The motive
seemed to be revenge — the girlfriend of
the Gaza gang’s leader, Joy Commock,
had been shot by mistake earlier. She
survived, but the rumor mill led to Mr.
Martin, and retribution came swiftly.The gun lay dormant for a year before
claiming the life of a 17-year-old, Shane
Sewell, on Sept. 6, 2016. He ended up in a
ditch, riddled with bullets, some from
the Browning.
Officials believe he was killed in a dis-
pute over a different firearm. In Ja-
maica, guns are often rented out by their
owners. The borrower, looking to com-
mit a robbery or even kill someone, pays
a fee to use the weapon. Afterward, the
gun is returned.
In the summer of 2017, the Browning
struck again. Kurt Mitchell, a fisherman
believed to be a King Street gang mem-
ber, was gunned down at a party — a re-
prisal for an earlier homicide against
the Gaza gang, the authorities believe.
As officials tried to stitch together theclues, the gun was repeatedly being
used as an enforcement tool of the Gaza
gang, often by Mr. Daley.
Mr. Daley had become embroiled in a
personal feud with another gangster,
Christopher Lynch, and some of the
shootings in 2017 came from their hatred
for each another, officials said.
They had once been friends, relatives
said, but that intimacy had turned into
an intense hostility. Mr. Daley tried to
kill Mr. Lynch on a Sunday in 2017, when
he spotted him walking home.
He fired at Mr. Lynch, who took off
and escaped, officials said. But a stray
bullet struck a 14-year-old girl in the
stomach. Luckily, the girl survived.Months later, Mr. Lynch’s father was
at a wake. At around 10:30 p.m., investi-
gators believe, Mr. Daley stormed the
wake and began shooting. The elder Mr.
Lynch died. Three others were injured.
Once again, the bullet fragments con-
nected the shootings to the 9 millimeter.
Joviane Hall was DJing at a bar near
Clarendon at 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2017,
when gunmen burst in.
After robbing the bar and its patrons,
they opened fire, hitting Mr. Hall, who
died on the way to the hospital. Officials
recognized the culprit: the Browning.
The murder was the beginning of a
spree. Two days later, another shooting
occurred at the Three Sisters Bar. At
around 10:50 p.m., Clovis Cooke Jr. and
Otis Gordon were standing outside
when a car pulled up.
The shooter fired 21 shots and sped
off. Investigators found yet another set
of 9-millimeter fragments.“EVERY DAY THEY KILL PEOPLE”
Every murder committed, every life tak-
en, left a wound that never healed.
Clovis Cooke Sr., recovering from
cataract surgery, plodded around in the
dark, searching for overdue bills in the
drift of papers on the small dining table.He wept at the mention of his son, 33,
who used to pay the bills and help
around the house.
“I think about him every day,” he said.
“Every day they kill people,” he said,
“and every day we grieve about it.”
The same void haunted the home
where Jody Ann Harvey was killed less
than two months after the younger Mr.
Cooke, in what some believe was a case
of mistaken identity.
Gunmen charged into her one-room
shack, firing on Ms. Harvey and her
daughter as they slept. Mr. Harvey cov-
ered the girl with her body, taking six 9-
millimeter rounds. Her daughter sur-
vived.
The deadly run of the Browning
ended, in some ways, the way it began.
Joy Commock — who had been shot by
mistake and survived, starting the cycle
of revenge that first set the handgun
loose on Jamaica in 2015 — was killed on
Jan. 21, 2018.
The casings matched the earlier
crimes: The gun killed Ms. Commock as
well, officials said.
She was home with her daughter
when she heard a noise, the police said.
She raced outside and found a fire burn-
ing in her yard. She knelt to extinguish
the flames and was shot by an assailant
hiding in the shadows.
In early 2018, the authorities were no
closer to finding the gun. They knew its
caliber and even the conflict the gun was
caught in. But while Mr. Daley — gang-
ster called Hawk Eye — was still alive,
no witnesses dared to testify.
Around 11 p.m. on April 28, an off-duty
police officer was at a bar in Clarendon
when two men showed up to rob it. One
of them was Mr. Daley. The officer drew
on the men and announced himself, offi-
cials said.
Mr. Daley turned and fired, but the of-
ficer had the drop on both men, killing
Mr. Daley on the spot. And like that, the
gun was off the streets.
Witnesses came forward to link Mr.
Daley to other shootings, officials said,
and the police later asked the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo-
sives to run a trace on his weapon.
It led all the way to North Carolina, to
a time before Mr. Daley was even born.Carnage in Jamaica with guns that come from America
JAMAICA, FROM PAGE 1
The police raided a house in Kingston, Jamaica. Retribution between rival gangs is a source of gun violence in the country.TYLER HICKS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Jamaica’s gun laws are strict,
with about 45,000 legal firearms
in a country of three million. But
it is awash in illegal weapons.