TWO men were yesterday stabbed to death in what police theorise is a reprisal for the death of eight-year-old Tamera Laing, whose body was found in a pit toilet in March Pen, Spanish Town, on Thursday.

The bodies of two men — Leighton Parkinson, 33, and Teshawn Campbell, 23 — were found with multiple stab wounds in the same March Pen community, a tough section of the old Jamaican capital.

“Based on investigations, we believe the men were killed as a reprisal for the child, whose body was found in the area,” a detective probing the case told the Jamaica Observer.

Investigators said a note found on one of the bodies of the men and which read, ‘Children are our future, rapists must die’, provided further evidence to their claim.

The little girl, who was a student of the nearby McCauley’s Primary School, went missing last Saturday. Her body was found Thursday in a pit latrine in a section of the community called Africa, just metres from her home.

Yesterday, the Constabulary Communication Network reported that about 1:30 am the police went to March Pen after residents found the body of Parkinson and alerted the constabulary. Police said when they arrived in the area a search was carried out and the body of Campbell was found.

There were fears among residents yesterday that there could be further reprisals, but the St Catherine North police (Spanish Town) promised to keep a close watch on the troubled community.

In the meantime, Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington, writing in this week’s Force Orders, expressed “great concern” over the violent attacks against children and the elderly over the past several days.

Ellington urged the public to be “more cautious with regard to our young children and to see to the safety and welfare of our elderly”.

He urged parents and community members “to be vigilant and understand that it is their duty to ensure the safety of our children and the elderly who are the most vulnerable of our society”.

Tamera Laing was among three children murdered this week. The others were four-year-old Natasha Brown, whose head was severed and her body dumped in a sinkhole in Duanvale, Trelawny, and Avia Hiutchinson, a 17-year-old Sandy Bay, Hanover girl who was killed and her body dumped on Maxfield Avenue in Kingston.

Two elderly women — 78-year-old Vera Knight, of Clarendon, and 83-year-old Sylvia Sewell, a newspaper vendor — were also brutally murdered last Saturday and on Thursday respectively.