THE nation woke to news yesterday of yet another horrific beheading, this time of a man in August Town, St Andrew, which heightened fears that the heinous practice is becoming more popular across the country.

The latest victim has been identified as 37-year-old Gary Emanuel Smith, whose headless body was yesterday found on a dirt track in a bushy area of Bedward Gardens, and the often volatile community in August Town, St Andrew.

Smith’s beheading is the fourth in a single week, following that of an 18-year-old male in St Catherine last Monday, and those of a mother and daughter in the same parish Wednesday last.

According to the police, Smith was at his Bedward Gardens home with his two young children some minutes after midnight last Friday when a group of men reportedly went into the yard and called him by name. When he answered, the men kicked in the door to his home and dragged him out.

Police surmise he was then taken about 400 yards away to a dirt track in the nearby hills and shot, before his head was severed from his body by his killers.

Residents reported hearing multiple explosions in the area. However, when discovered about 6:00 am, Smith’s body had only a single bullet wound to the right leg, according to an officer from the Major Investigations Taskforce (MIT).

“That’s the only one [gunshot wound] we see, but we don’t know if they shot him in the head before dem cut it off,” said the policeman, who was among a team of investigators scouring the thick undergrowth for the missing body part.

“We can’t find it anywhere; it look like they left with it. Normally, you could follow the blood trail or see the flash [splash] of blood if dem throw it, but we don’t see any of that,” continued the officer, who asked not to be named.

“But we know that is here them cut it [head] off, because you can see the amount of blood and thing in the bushes. And you could see where them drag him body out in the open so people could see him,” he added, suggesting the gruesome murder was a message.

The headless corpse was clad in a merino and underpants. It was sprawled on its back with its feet outstretched.

Residents had reportedly heard Smith pleading “Don’t kill me, please don’t kill me,” as he was being hauled from his home by his attackers.

The cops began combing the area for him after relatives later called the station informing the police that he had not returned home.

Smith’s killing followed the macabre murders of 18-year-old Scott Thomas, 40-year-old Charmaine Rattray and her 19-year-old daughter Joyette Lynch, who were all beheaded in Lauriston on the outskirts of the old capital of Spanish Town in St Catherine.

Investigators suspect Thomas was killed by his cronies from the notorious Klansman gang on Monday. Police report that he was a major player in the notorious criminal outfit, but fell out of favour with his fellow gang-members and met his gruesome demise at their hands.

Rattray and Lynch were slaughtered in their home two days later by men who invaded their home.

On Thursday, a female human head believed to be that of Lynch was fished from the Rio Cobre near the Spanish Town Hospital.

The heads of Rattray and Thomas have not yet been found.

Yesterday, Smith’s body was identified by one of his two sisters. The women seemed too grief-stricken to even cry, and stood staring silently as investigators photographed the gory scene.

“I know that is him ’cause me know how him body stay (looks), and he always had some knee problems, so he [his body] has a whole heap of cuts on his knees,” said the woman.

“I am just lost, trust me,” she muttered softly, as her older sister stared into the distance in silence.

None of them could imagine how their brother, a father of four, whom they described as “a hard working mason”, could have met such a gruesome fate.

Yesterday, Deputy Superintendent Robblin Wedderburn from the St Andrew Central Police Division expressed what many of the handful of horrified onlookers who congregated at the scene, seemed to be thinking.

“It seems like this is becoming a trend,” said Wedderburn, theorising that Smith’s slaying may have been a copycat of the Spanish Town beheadings.

As investigators processed the scene, located at the end of a meandering dirt track in the hilly area, other policemen decried the beheadings, and lamented the limited resources available to them to combat crime in Jamaica.

One police sergeant said he feared a potential outbreak of violence in the unstable Bedward Gardens community following Smith’s killing.

“The other day when the place did hot (volatile), dem (Police High Command) set up a post with about 400 policemen and soldiers. But little after that them call dem ‘weh,” said the sergeant.

“But if you don’t have the police constantly in the place the boy dem (criminals) a go come back. Because is here them live, is their place,” he said.

Another officer, obviously frustrated by the number of such killings, moaned: “This haffi stop, it has to. But the justice system not working for us (police). You hold a man for murder, him go jail, and couple weeks later him get bail and is back on the road again. It can’t work!”

Yesterday, Deputy Police Commissioner Glenmore Hinds described the recent beheadings as barbaric but shied away from describing it as a trend.

“All killings, in some way, shape or form are barbaric. This only shows a new dimension to evil that is on the land,” he said.

“I wouldn’t call it a trend, there are three separate incidents. Whether or not that indicates a trend, I wouldn’t want to stretch it there yet,” he said, noting that the most recent cases are not the first instances of beheadings in Jamaica, listing St James, St Mary, and St Thomas as parishes in which this cold-blooded method of slaughtering human beings has been used before.