Gunmen yesterday morning torched a house in the community of Long Wall in Stony Hill, St Andrew then shot dead a father and his son as they tried to escape the inferno.

Cops theorise that George ‘Lloyd’ Smielie, 43, and his son Winston, 17, were gunned down in a possible reprisal for the stabbing death of a youth in the community two months ago.

“Gunmen, at about 6:30 am yesterday, invaded the home where they shot and killed the two men,” said Deputy Superintendent Altermoth ‘Parro’ Campbell of the St Andrew North police.

Residents who told the Observer of the horrific incident said the killers set the house ablaze with more than five family members, including children, inside.

“The man them, it look like, come to wipe out everybody in the family,” said a spokesman for a group of residents gathered at the scene of the crime.

“The man them, about five of them, surround the house and set it ablaze and then opened fire on the family members who tried to escape,” said the spokesman, who described the attack as the worst to have taken place in the quiet community in recent times.

Yesterday, as investigators combed the cordoned crime scene for clues, the partially burnt body of the senior Semiely lay metres away from the body of his son, evidence of the hellish terror unleashed on the family just hours before.

While family members fought hard to hold back tears, an obviously distraught Augustus Smielie, 72, could not bring himself to look at the bodies of his son and grandson.

“All now I don’t go down there,” he said. “I can’t take it.”

At the same time, residents who spoke in hushed tones about the unfortunate incident said that it was just last week Friday that Lloyd had returned from Canada after six months on farm work.

Residents have since claimed that the family member who is accused of the stabbing murder escaped harm.