NEGRIL, Westmoreland — A gardener who police believe stumbled upon the robbery of seven tourists at a West End property in this coastal resort town, was fatally shot yesterday and the security guard at Falcon Cottages wounded by another machete-wielding attacker.

Thirty year-old Robert Legg died after receiving a bullet in the chest and a wound to the neck. Six Britons and a Canadian were robbed of about $50,000 in cash and jewellery, including watches and bracelets. None of the visitors was harmed in the early morning attack in which five men armed with guns and machetes descended on the guest house.

The incident reportedly began at about 4:00 am when the security guard, who went to the rear of the building to investigate suspicious sounds, was chopped to the head, elbow and finger. The Negril police, who were summoned, took him to the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital where he was treated and released. The guard went back to work where he reportedly saw his attacker and went to get help from a group of nearby men when an explosion was heard.

The guard, along with the men whom he had summoned, reportedly discovered Legg’s lifeless body just outside a cabin. According to Observer sources, the thieves opened fire when leaving the scene and it is believed that that was when Legg was hit.

At least five rooms on the property were broken into, and the seven visitors robbed.

Yesterday, West End residents, who were critical of the police’s response to the incident, expressed concern about their own safety. One man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, claimed that when the security guard was chopped, citizens could not reach the Negril police by phone and had to contact cops in Montego Bay who then relayed the call for help to Westmoreland.

Others maintained that the police should have paid special attention to the resort property after the guard was attacked, arguing that this might have prevented Legg’s murder.

The incident comes on the heels of assertions by Tourism Minister Aloun Assamba that visitors to the island have remained largely untouched throughout the spiralling crime wave that has affected that island in the last three weeks. The killings have mostly occurred in sections of the Corporate Area, but there have been some incidents in the parishes of St James and Trelawny.

Meanwhile, the police’s information arm reported four other killings yesterday.

Eighteen year-old Orlando “Rambo” Henderson was found dead in a gully on Bay Farm Road in St Andrew. According to the police, residents heard explosions at about 3:30 am and called the cops who found Henderson’s bullet-riddled body when they arrived.

Yesterday, Elvis Berthfield, a 29 year-old higgler from Daniel Town in Trelawny, became the third person to be killed in the usually quiet rural parish within the last four days. His naked body was discovered at about 8:45 am, five miles from Clarks Town, where Sydney Palmer and Leonard Petgrave were gunned down on Monday and Tuesday nights respectively.

A few hours before his body was discovered by a farmer feeding his pigs, Berthfield was regalling mourners at a wake with a rendition of gerreh selections. At about 3:45 am, he was among a group of people making their way home to a section of Daniel Town, known as Texas. He reportedly refused to stay with the crowd, despite the urgings of others in the group who opted to take a frequently-used shortcut to get safely home. His body was found with multiple machete wounds hours later.

Berthfield’s killing increased the parish’s murder toll to 12.

Two hours later, 41 year-old Robin Glen Lyons from Montego Bay was shot dead at Watson Avenue in Kingston 5. Cops found his bullet-riddled body in a bedroom after residents, who had heard explosions, summoned them to the scene.

And 18 year-old Dwayne Gordon of William Road, Kingston 13, was fatally shot by gunmen on Delacree Road at about 2:00 pm yesterday afternoon. The police said Gordon was riding a bicycle along the road when two armed men approached him and opened fire, killing him on the spot.