FLOWER HILL, St James – Senior investigators were late last night searching for clues as they tried to track down a group of armed criminals who fatally shot five men in the parish yesterday, beheading one after the bloody slaughter.

A taxi operator who was shot and injured during the incident was last night hospitalised in stable condition.

The dead, all of Flower Hill in St James, were identified as 27-year-old unemployed Huan Cole; Devron Harris, 21, farmer; Lloyd Ishmael, 51, a mason; Lestin Morris, a 32-year-old mason; and Ransford McFarlane, a 39-year-old farmer.

Four of the men were killed at a premises which is said to be a regular “hang-out spot” for some members of the community, while Cole, who residents claimed was of unsound mind, was shot after the rampaging gunmen peppered the area with bullets before leaving the scene with Harris’ head in their possession.

One resident who claimed he left the premises shortly before the gunmen struck, said he was among a group of about eight people at the location, which was their haunt. He said he left the men cooking a pot of porridge.

“Me lef them here because them say them want porridge but mi is a pork man so me leave to go and eat my pork because mi leave it to simmer down. Mi lef them here and mi go over mi yard then mi hear some man a run come and mi hear some explosions sounding like bombs. Everybody around here (in community) hear di shot them. It come in like dynamite,” the obviously frightened man told the Observer yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon scores of despondent-looking residents gathered at the gate of the premises where the grisly killings took place. Some had watery eyes as they looked at the bloodstained section of a concrete pavement where Harris was said to have been beheaded.

“The impressions left in the concrete suggest that it is a machete dem use to cut off him head,” a man said of the large marks dug out in the concrete.

“When mi reach near the spot mi see something kick up like a goat, but when mi look good mi see a somebody foot and mi nuh see no head,” a shaken resident whispered.

Inside the section of the unfinished house where the killings occurred was like a scene from a slaughter-house. Blood covered the floor like a carpet. A blood-stained tam, said to have belonged to Ishmael, was seen on the floor, while a pot of unsweetened porridge that the men were preparing sat on a stove in a corner of the room.

Detective Constable Ulette Lewis Green, the Constabulary Communication Network’s officer for St James, said that at approximately 9:20 pm on Wednesday five men were at a house in the Flower Hill community when four men armed with handguns went to the premises and asked for Harris.

Harris, she said, later went outside the house and was shot several times by the men. Three gunmen then went inside the house and fired at the other men. They then beheaded Harris. His head was later found along King Street in front of the Burchell Baptist Church.

No motive has yet been established for the killings.

The killings bring the number of homicides recorded in St James to 25 since the start of the year.

Last year, the parish reported a record 178 murders.

Alarmed at the increase in violence in the parish, head of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry Pauline Reid yesterday urged the security forces to fast-track plans to curb the level of crime in the parish.

“The business community and the community in general are very, very concerned about the escalation of crime in the city and I am calling on the police high command to fast-track the plans and programmes they have to control crime in the city,” Reid said.

Earlier this month, the chamber, concerned about the increase in murders in St James last year, met with National Security Minister Peter Phillips and members of the security forces to discuss strategies aimed at stamping out the level of criminal activities that have overwhelmed the parish.