AT 18, Scott Thomas was an integral member of the feared Spanish Town-based criminal Klansman gang. By that tender age, too, Thomas was also wanted by the police for more than eight murders within the St Catherine North Police Division.

But in recent months, Thomas had fallen from the good graces of the hierarchy of his gang. The split, according to a police source, was due to the teen’s refusal to undertake certain directives given by the gang’s higher-ups.

The period of tension came to a bloody end before dawn yesterday when a group of men, armed with guns and machete, kicked open the door to Thomas’s residence in the Lauriston Housing Scheme, dragged him from his bed, then shot and chopped him to death.

Still, the men did not stop there. Following the brutal killing, Thomas’ head was severed and taken away.

A relative of the victim, who was in the house at the time, was left unharmed.

The police were later called to the scene by residents who found Thomas’s headless body after hearing the horrified screams.

“The attack, we believe, was the result of an intra-gang feud as Thomas was a member of the Klansman Gang,” said Superintendent Anthony Castel, who heads the St Catherine North Police Division.

Yesterday, the police vowed to bring to justice the men responsible for the brutal murder. The same men, the police have said, are also responsible for the “terrorising of law-abiding citizens” in the area.