EIGHT persons were killed in separate incidents on Monday and Tuesday, and this time the killings cut right across the island, pushing the year-to-date murder toll to 299, or 4.3 murders per day.

Vigilante justice and gunmen claimed lives in St Elizabeth, Clarendon, St Catherine, St James and Kingston, in the latest deaths. At about 7:00 am yesterday, 21 year-old Iwain Smith of no fixed address was shot dead by gunmen at the intersection of West Queen and West streets in downtown Kingston.

Four-and-a-half-hours later, an unidentified man, who police believe to be about 35 years old, was walking along Lyndhurst Road when three gunmen confronted him and shot him after a chase.

The dead man is described as of slim build, dark complexion and was clad in a blue shirt and blue jeans pants.

On Monday, in the agricultural parish of St Elizabeth, in the little known district of Kinowl, a man known only as ‘Sarge’ and believed to be about 40 years old, was chopped to death; and another man, said to be a 43 year-old construction worker from Christiana, Manchester, was injured by residents, for slaughtering two cows.

Two others involved in the theft of the livestock were said to have escaped the angry mob unharmed.

On Monday night, three gunmen shot and killed businessman Hui Huang, 26, during a robbery at his grocery shop in Grange Hill, a community in Lilliput, St James.

In Clarendon, Leathland Smith, another shopkeeper, of Red Road in Palmers Cross, was fatally shot by unknown assailants Monday at about 8:45 pm.

Nearly one hour later in the nation’s old capital, Spanish Town, vendor Stafford ‘Larry’ Anderson, 46, of Lakes Pen, was killed by gunmen.

At 10:00 pm, gunmen also killed Linval Campbell, 49, a truck driver, and a 37 year-old vendor known only as ‘Joshie’, both of March Pen, Spanish Town Road.