GRANGE HILL, Westmoreland – Police have launched a manhunt for heavily armed men who shot and killed three men in this community Wednesday night.

The dead men, all of Westmoreland, have been identified as:

* Chrissel Hudson, also called Enoch, a 35-year-old carpenter of Crowder and Grange Hill;

* Duwayne Christopher Scott, also called Rubbish Heap, 20, a labourer also of Crowder and Grange Hill; and

* Okeem Bent, alias Red Bull, a 28-year-old tiler of Burnt Savannah.

A distraught Veronica Lawrence, Scott’s mother, said despite losing her son she had much to thank God for as she could have lost her two daughters, aged 18 and 22, during the gun attack.

Lawrence said that after the shooting started in the community gunmen forcibly entered her house and held her 18-year-old daughter hostage, threatening to kill her if she did not take them to her brother.

Fearing for her life, the 18-year-old took the gunmen to one of the houses on the premises which her brother and older sister occupied.

When they invaded the house and did not find Scott, one of the gunmen threatened to shoot the two sisters, but one begged to have their lives spared.

A family member told the Jamaica Observer that just as the armed men were about to leave one of the gunmen pointed a flashlight under the bed where Scott was in hiding. He was pulled out and sprayed with bullets.

“They never knew he (Scott) was inside because him hide under the bed. So they walked out. One of them asked what is to be done with the two women when one said to ‘come on’. [But] one turned back and shined a light under the bed and saw him.”

Lawrence believes her son was the main target of the killers, but pondered what could be the motive behind it, adding that during an earlier stage of his life he had run-ins with the law, but “I was so glad that he was now behaving himself”.

Before shooting Scott, the gunmen reportedly shot up Hudson on the road while he was running and begging for his life.

After that they reportedly stormed into the yard where Scott lived and entered one of the houses on the premises where they found Bent and peppered him with gunshots.

Lawrence explained that Bent was only at the premises because the 8:00 pm curfew caught him in the community.

“There is no personal connection between the three of them, because the one who dead on the road, live up the road. Red Bull lives in Burnt Savannah but because curfew catch him, he just decided to sleep here.

Even if them come to kill my son, leave him because him don’t do nothing. Maybe when they (gunmen) see the shadow in the house, they forced their way in and opened fire on him,” said Lawrence.

Investigators said they removed spent shells, discharged from rifles, shotguns and handguns, from the scene.

Wednesday night’s triple killing brings the murder tally in Westmoreland to 23 since the start of this year, two more than the 21 recorded over the corresponding period last year.