WESTERN BUREAU – A taxi operator was gunned down and an elderly cane vendor injured Sunday during an afternoon attack in the busy square linking the Farm and Rose Heights communities.

The dead man has been identified as Ian ‘Fresh’ Campbell, 41, of Matches Lane in Rose Heights. The 67 year-old cane vendor has been hospitalised and cops have not released his name.

Area residents told the Observer that Campbell was returning from a funeral, and before going home, had stopped to talk with the cane vendor.

His common-law wife Andrea Hines said she heard of the incident while on her way to the supermarket.

“While I was going to the supermarket, I heard someone saying she could not believe that ‘Fresh’ was dead. When I went up the road I saw his body on the ground,” Hines said.

She last saw Campbell as he left the house, dressed in a black outfit on Sunday morning.

“I heard he was coming from a funeral, but he told me he was going on a flex to check somebody,” Hines added.

She said Campbell was the breadwinner as she has been without a job for more than two years after being made redundant from a data entry company at the Montego Bay Freezone.

According to the Constabulary Communication Network’s liaison officer for St James Camille Tracy, both men were standing at the intersection when two men armed with guns approached them and began firing several shots. They were hit and taken to the Cornwall Regional Hospital where Campbell was pronounced dead and the senior citizen admitted in serious condition.

Tracy said the police recovered a number of 9mm spent shells from the scene, and no motive was established for the killing. She is calling on persons who may have witnessed the incident to supply any information they may have to the police.

Campbell’s death came on the heels of Friday’s slaying of 56 year-old taxi operator Clive Allen, of Farm Heights in Montego Bay. His body was found at about 11:45 pm, slumped over the steering wheel of his Toyota Corolla motor car that was parked along the Long Bay Road in the parish. There were bullet wounds to his head.

Police said Allen was driving along the main road when he was fatally shot. Also on Friday the bodies of two men – 21 year-old Omelio ‘Bum Bum’ James, a construction worker of Liliput and Damion ‘Dawdy’ Walker, 24, unemployed of Railway Lane in the parish, were found along a marl road in Liliput. The police said both bodies were riddled with bullets, and it is theorised that they were killed by their cronies.

Deputy Superintendent of Police for St James Cleon March said James and Walker were wanted in connection with three murders committed in 2002.