MORANT BAY, St Thomas – Four men were fatally shot by the police in Morant Bay, St Thomas on Thursday evening following the robbery of a hardware store.

An employee of the hardware store was shot and injured.

The police said yesterday that two .38 revolvers, a Glock 19 pistol and a .45 semi-automatic pistol along with 28 rounds of ammunition, $78,600 and a Toyota Corolla motor car, registered PB9821, were seized during the incident.

One of the alleged gunmen was identified as Kirk Brown, of Hayes in Clarendon, but the other three were unidentified up to last night.

The police report that the men were part of a band of armed thugs who had held up the Chung Chan hardware store and robbed the security guard of his .38 revolver. The men then took an undetermined amount of cash from the store manager, the police said.

According to the police, they were alerted to the robbery and as they approached the hardware store, the gunmen opened fire at them. The cops reported that they fired back and hit Brown. A .38 Taurus revolver, loaded with three live rounds, were taken from him. The employee was discovered shot and the police said both was taken to the Princess Margaret Hospital where Brown was pronounced dead and the employee treated.

Police say the other robbers managed to escape but the cops managed to recover the cash on the scene.

Three hours later, the police say they conducted an operation at Upper West Street in the town where three of the robbers were seen. The three men are reported to have taken on the police and ended up being killed.

Police said they recovered the .38 revolver which was stolen from the security guard at that scene.

The Ruger and Glock 19 pistols and the ammunition were found after the police conducted a search of the area yesterday morning.

The Toyota Corolla was traced to Hayes in Clarendon and the owner hired Brown to drive it as a route taxi on the Hayes to May Pen route. The car was found a short distance from the scene of the second shoot-out.

Yesterday, detectives from the Kingston West police division could not confirm a report that one of the dead men was a man known only as ‘Brettler’, who was wanted by the Denham Town police for eight counts of shooting. Police say they suspect that ‘Brettler’ was the triggerman who fired at the police during a police operation in Wilton Gardens (Rema) a few weeks ago.

In that incident, Deputy Superintendent Hugh Bish escaped serious injury after a .45 bullet was stopped by his bullet proof vest.

“We are sending people over there to see if it is really him. The gun he used to shoot at the police was a .45 pistol,” Deputy Superintendent Delroy Hewitt, head of operations at the Kingston West police division, said.