MONTEGO BAY, St James — The police say one of three suspects in the brutal slaying of an 11-year-old girl and her 19-year-old twin brothers in Irwin Heights, St James, on Wednesday evening is a man who is in custody.

“We are not saying he is involved, but there are strong indications that he might be involved,” Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Clifford Chambers told the Jamaica Observer on Friday.

Chambers, who heads the Area One Police Division, also said that the other two suspects were arrested shortly after the killings.

“It was quick, precise action by the police which led to the the arrest of the two,” Chambers said.

Peta-Gaye Cooke and her twin brothers Givaughn and Givaughnie Stewart were shot dead by gunmen who stormed the family house while their mother, Denise Kelly, was at a nearby house getting food for her dogs.

The police report that 16 spent shells from two guns were found at the scene.

On Friday, ACP Chambers explained that the police probe is indicating that the gun attack was gang-related.

He said that one of the brothers was recently assaulted by members of a gang in the community after he resisted their attempts to recruit him.

In January this year, 16-year-old Chris-Jay Thompson was shot dead as he was walking to a shop in Irwin Heights.

The police are trying to establish if that killing is linked to Wednesday evening’s murders as Thompson was a cousin of the murdered siblings.

According to the police, Wednesday’s murders were committed shortly after Kelly left the house about 7:00 pm. When she heard several loud explosions sounding like gunshots she rushed back home where she saw her three children in the bedroom suffering from gunshot wounds to their upper bodies.

She retrieved her grandson, who was unhurt, from the bedroom and called the police.

On their arrival, the police saw the three bloodied, bullet-riddled bodies inside the bedroom.

They were taken to Cornwall Regional Hospital where they were pronounced dead.

On Thursday, Kelly told the Observer that she had moved out of the community in which she had lived for all her life.

The bloodshed had become too much, she said.

“I’m not going back there. Is there I born and grow, but the people dem around there… are not nice. They are not a nice set of people dem, so I’m not going to stay around there,” a distraught Kelly said.