FOUR of five men who the police suspect of engaging in a robbery spree in St Mary Tuesday night, were shot dead in Worthy Park, St Catherine yesterday morning after a high-speed car chase covering more than 20 miles in three parishes.

The men, the cops said, engaged them in a shoot-out after their Mitsubishi motorcar was unable to travel any further on a dirt track in a canefield.

As news of the killings spread, residents of Linstead were overheard praising the police and expressing relief that the men had died.

“Dem fi dead,” shouted some, “De police dem a do dem job.”

Similar expressions were heard in Spanish Town where the men were taken to a funeral home after doctors pronounced them dead at the Linstead Hospital.

Police identified one of the dead men as Glenroy Stewart, a 22 year-old resident of Alderston district in St Ann. Stewart, they said, was on bail awaiting trial for the shooting death of Kenneth Mitchell on January 10 last year.

According to the police, the five men held up a bar in Sandside district, St Mary on Tuesday night and robbed the bartender of dozens of bottles of rum. They then robbed a bus conductor of $1,400.

The men were apparently searching for another place to rob when they were intercepted by the St Mary Flying Squad who chased them across the parish border into St Ann.

A police party from St Ann joined the pursuit in the Moneague area, but the men managed to cross into St Catherine, pulling police from that parish into the chase, which ended on the lonely dirt track.

During the shooting, one of the men escaped and is now being sought by the police.

The police also said that they took two firearms — a semi-automatic pistol with its serial number erased and a homemade shotgun — from the dead men.

— Observer reporters T K Whyte and Philecia Campbell contributed to this story.