Had Neville Smith not gone to an open lot about five metres from his house at Portmore Lane to wash his truck, he probably would have been the third victim of the three heartless gunmen who went into his house and murdered his six year-old son, Tajae, and 16 year-old daughter, Tavia, on Wednesday night.

According to Smith, after leaving the truck at the open lot, he got home at about 7:50 pm and told his children that he would return soon.

“I was out by the truck, out there, standing there. I don’t even know for what reason I was still standing there,” Smith, still in a daze, told the Observer yesterday morning while sitting on a block in a corner of the front yard of his home, surrounded by neighbours and other residents of the community.

“I heard three shots. so I said to myself ‘What happen?’ because shot a fire up in the lane. We’re not used to these sorts of things. Anyway, I didn’t move because I didn’t know what was going on. When I looked I saw three guys came out on the road and a car drive up, a white Corolla, and they got into the car,” he said.

“The place was kinda dark. I couldn’t see their faces.”

He said that after the car drove away, someone rushed out to the road and told him that something had happened at his house. He ran to the house where he found his son’s body in a large pool of blood at the front door with a gunshot hole in the head.

The sight jolted Smith into a panicked search for his daughter.

“I rushed into the house, and rushed into the room ’cause my daughter was here too and I was calling out to my daughter ‘Tavia, Tavia where are you?’ but I’m not getting a sound. So I rushed out back, I ran to the bathroom, ran round the back and I tried everywhere and I still didn’t see her. So I came back out and rushed outside and asked, ‘Anybody see my daughter, where she is? I don’t see her anywhere’.”

Smith said he ran back inside the house and resumed looking until he eventually found Tavia in a corner by his bed.

“When I saw her laying down, and I rushed and grabbed her up and I see pure blood. She was dead,” he said.

Yesterday, National Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips described the murders as “repulsive, shocking, sinister and deeply disturbing”.

“The killings hold serious implications not only for the nation’s children, but also the country’s future,” said Phillips, adding that it was troubling to see children being used as pawns in the vicious circle of violence and reprisals.

He called on the police to relentlessly work towards tracking down and bringing the killers to justice, and expressed his condolences to the family and friends of the children.

Jamaica Labour Party spokesman on security, Derrick Smith also condemned the murders.

“I totally condemn this gangland style of operation within our midst,” Smith said. “This behaviour expresses the utmost disregard for our system of law and order.”

Deputy mayor of Portmore Colin Fagan, who was at the scene, expressed shock at the murders.

“This area is not known as a hot-spot, people just basically go about their business,” he said. “This is a shock. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know how someone could come into a premises and treat children like that. This is really a sad day in Portmore.”

One fact that has left Neville Smith bewildered is that the murderers did not take anything from the house.

“Nothing missing. And I have a lot of money in this house.” he said. “I’m trying to stay strong right now. I don’t even know myself right now. My kids didn’t do anything. They killed my kids for reasons I don’t even know about, and my kids are decent kids. Everybody loves them.”

The children’s mother, Claudia Lowe-Smith, was unable to contain her grief. Just before she was escorted from the depressing scene by some of her relatives, she shared with the Observer her last phone conversation with her daughter.

“I was at work and she (Tavia) called me at about seven o’clock and she said she was going to cook and I said ‘yes, Tavia, cook’. And she said ‘Mommy, what I’m going to cook you don’t eat. I’m going to cook something different’ and I said ‘Yes, Tavia’.”

Lowe-Smith said that she was on the highway heading home when she got the call that her children were killed.

She also said that two weeks before the murders thieves had broken into the house and stolen her daughter’s laptop. However, she could not say whether both events were related.

Yesterday, detectives at the St Catherine South Police Station said that they were still trying to ascertain the motive for the killings.