TWO men and a woman were shot dead near an age-old cemetery and a beleaguered police station in Kingston’s depressed west end yesterday, as blood-letting from gang warfare continued.

Police reported that the three met their deaths in plain daylight when gunmen opened fire on them as they travelled in a Toyota Corolla station wagon, in the vicinity of the Denham Town Police Station and the May Pen Cemetery along Spanish Town Road.

Dead are George Mair, 47, of 9 Upper Second Street Trench Town; Dwayne Allen, 28, and his baby mother, Trudy-Ann Anderson, 22, both of 2 Upper First Street, also in Trench Town.

Police said the Toyota station wagon was heading in a westerly direction from the police station around 1:45 pm when a silver Toyota motor car appeared from Industrial Terrace and rammed the station wagon, knocking it onto the opposite side of the road. The car spun to a screeching halt.

Before the dazed victims could react, four men with M16 rifles and a 9mm handgun alighted from the silver Toyota and opened fire on the occupants. Three of the shooters then made their escape through the cemetery, while the fourth sped off in the silver Toyota in the direction of the Tivoli Gardens community.

Police said that over 50 shots were fired at the three, all of whom died on the spot. Inside the bullet-riddled death car, Anderson’s body, clad in a white tank top and pink pants, lay slumped in the backseat. Allen’s head was resting on Mair, whose face was disfigured by the gunmen’s bullets.

Blood could be seen seeping from the car, chilling evidence of the multiple killing which has marked the national murder scene in recent years.

A large crowd – including school children, mothers with their babies, and youths from the community – converged on the scene, blocking the street and lining the perimeter fence of nearby premises, including the cemetery.

The police theorised that Allen, otherwise called ‘Susu’, was the gunmen’s target. Allen, they said, was a part of a gang from which he defected and which was constantly at war with his new gang. Three months ago, a failed attempt on Allen’s life resulted in him being hospitalised.

The Observer was told that Allen, who was facing the Gun Court on a charge of shooting with intent, was on his way from the Denham Town Police Station where he was required to report every Monday and Wednesday as part of his bail condition, when the killers pounced.

“A dem (Allen and Anderson) mek George dead; if him never have to carry dem go station he would be alive now,” one woman charged angrily, as she made her way through the huge crowd.

“It would be better if I had heard that he died from sugar than like this,” cried Mair’s eldest daughter, Kareen, one of his four children.

“I was in Portmore when my stepmother called me to say that they just killed my father. I can put my head on the block for him; he is not the type of person who is mixed up in any wrongdoing,” she swore.

“George was a jovial person, who did his little hustling with his car. This morning when he was leaving the house, he took up the baby, kissed her then said to me ‘See you later, mums’; that was the last conversation we had,” said George’s common-law wife, Adris Skein, as she shook her head, all the time trying unsuccessfully to fight back the tears.

When the Observer left the scene around 5:16 pm, the bodies were not yet removed from the vehicle as cops from the Denham Town Police Station carried out their investigation.