A fruit vendor and a female passer-by were yesterday accidentally shot and injured during an altercation between a policeman and a taxi operator in Spanish Town.

The vendor, Rupert ‘Lloyd’ Virtue, who sells melon on Cumberland Road, has been hospitalised with a bullet wound to the left shoulder.

Virtue, 47, told the Observer that at about 11:00 yesterday morning he was sitting on a makeshift seat in the vicinity of the Victory Road drug store facing Cumberland Road when the gunfire started.

“Mi hear the shot dem a fire and when mi look mi see mi hand a bleed,” Virtue said as he waited for an X-ray to be done at the Spanish Town Hospital.

Following the shooting, angry taxi operators, vendors and residents who had gathered at the scene, criticised the police, saying that higglers and taxi drivers were harassed daily by the cops and that this time they had gone too far.

“We see the policeman and the taxi man inna argument and as the taxi man drive off, the blue seam policeman pull out him gun and fire three shot after him,” said clothes vendor Doreen Nugent, who claimed to be an eyewitness.

“One of the shot ketch Lloyd (Virtue) and when mi call to the policeman and tell him, him fan mi off,” said Nugent.

A spokesperson at the Spanish Town Police Station described the incident as “unfortunate” and said the police would be launching a full investigation into the matter.