ALBION, St James — The Montego Bay police were, up to last night, hunting two suspects in connection with Sunday’s fatal shooting of a two-year-old boy and a man in the Second Street area of the tough inner-city community of Albion.

The dead toddler is Zachary Campbell of Norwood, while 37-year-old Dwayne Marzouca of Irwin is the second shooting victim.

The child’s mother was also shot and injured in the attack.

According to a highly placed police source, about 6:40 Sunday evening a group of persons returning home from the finals of a community football game played at the Albion field was peppered with bullets by gun-toting men who disembarked from a motor car.

The child’s mother, who lives in Norwood, but who has relatives in Albion, was among those fired on.

She grabbed the child in her arms and headed for her grandfather’s house nearby. She reportedly said it was when she reached the dwelling that she felt a burning pain in her back.

The source of the pain was soon found. She had been shot. In fact, she had been shot twice, and one of the bullets that had ripped through her back and exited through her armpit had struck her baby in the head as she ran with him, killing him.

“She (the child’s mother) was living in Albion, so she go where she used to live because she still have relatives living there. She said she heard shots firing so she ran with the baby. She said she felt a stinging blow but she never took it seriously, so she went over and asked one of her family members to take the baby from her,” a relative told the Observer during a visit to the Norwood home of the parents of the slain child. The relative said the mother was unaware that her child had been killed until she handed him over to the relative.

When this newspaper visited yesterday, the mother was too distraught to speak to the media.

“We are all heartbroken because we are just getting over a death in the family. It’s hard on the family to adjust to this now because we don’t get over the first death as yet, and now this. The baby don’t even start live nuh life yet,” said Thadia, a family member. Residents of Albion theorised that the deadly attack may have stemmed from an altercation during Sunday’s football game between a team from the community and their opponents from the gritty Blood Lane in Glendevon.

The altercation, which forced the game to come to an abrupt halt, soon escalated to the point where spectators had to flee for their lives as gunmen started to fire shots in the venue. Residents also suggest that a number of footballers on the team are from the volatile Flanker community nearby.

Meanwhile, yesterday morning, a blanket of gloom covered Albion where residents said that Marzouca, the other victim of the marauding gunmen, had been visiting a friend in the community when he was killed by their bullets.

During his tour of Albion, the Jamaica Labour Party caretaker for the newly established constituency of Central St James, Heroy Clarke, condemned the killings.

“Once again, it is a sad day in the lives of Montegonians. We have lost the life of a toddler who knows nothing of what was happening and our hearts go out to these people,” Clarke stated.