GRANGE, Hanover – One of three would-be robbers who attempted to break into a grocery shop in the small rural community of Grange early yesterday morning was set upon and beaten to death by an angry mob.

Police identified the victim of vigilante justice as Andy ‘Ninja’ Hylton, 32, from a tiny district called Black-A-Dia, in Salt Spring, Hanover.

Hylton’s accomplices, all said to be in their mid-30s, escaped the mob of angry residents, during the early morning incident.

Reports are that about 2:00 am, Hylton and his alleged cronies, rode up to the shop on bicycles.

They travelled to the area on bicycles, said police reports.

It is alleged that shortly afterwards the men were seen by residents trying to gain entry to the building. They alerted their neighbours and descended on the shop.

The alleged robbers attempted to flee, chased by the residents, some of whom were armed with machetes and stones.

They caught Hylton, but the other two unidentified men fled into nearby bushes, using the greenery as cover for their escape.

Hylton was taken to the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital in neighbouring Westmoreland, after the mob beating, where he was pronounced dead.

The police has taken the bicycles into custody.

Yesterday, several residents told the Sunday Observer that the trio had earlier tried to gain entry into another grocery shop in the nearby community of Kendal, about a mile away.

That robbery attempt, they said, was thwarted as a result of the vigilance of area residents.

“The same man dem try to break into the shop up a Kendal and some people see dem and call out, so dem run,” said a Grange resident.

Mob justice is illegal, but such killings are fairly commonplace in Jamaica and perpetrators often go unpunished.

Yesterday, Grange celebrated the killing of Hylton and warned would-be robbers that they would meet a similar fate for committing such an act.

“We don’t tolerate robbers here, anybody who robs will be murdered,” a resident warned.

Three weeks ago, a man who reportedly attacked a clerical assistant and an acting principal with a machete at the Salem Primary and Junior High in Beeston Spring, located in the neighbouring parish of Westmoreland was also chopped and beaten to death by an angry mob.

An arrest is yet to be made in that incident.

The number of mob killings could not be ascertained immediately, but Commissioner of Police Lucius Thomas has on numerous occasions urged residents to desist from vigilantism.

Said Thomas last September, as he addressed businessmen in Trelawny: “I am appealing to you all to desist from taking the law into your own hands. It does not augur well for the development of an equitable society, based on law and order, and the preservation of human rights and dignity.”

At that time, Trelawny had recorded three mob killings for the year 2005.

cummingsm@jamaicaobserver.com