MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Residents of Top Greenvale in this south-central parish are shocked and disturbed that their neighbour 45-year-old Paula Saunders was on Tuesday found dead a day after she went missing from the community.

Saunders’s partially decomposed body was found on Bethel Street, Greenvale in a remote area covered by pieces of log, which residents believe her killer intended to use to burn her body.

Unconfirmed reports from residents suggest that a man may have been taken into police custody in relation to the incident.

Efforts to contact head of the Manchester police Superintendent Lloyd Darby up to mid-afternoon Wednesday were unsuccessful as calls and messages sent to him went unanswered.

A resident of Top Greenvale, who asked not to be named, said Saunders paid him to do gardening at her home ever since she moved to the community from Clarendon three years ago.

“You see Monday when she a left out yah she call me pon mi phone enuh, because she did gone a Mandeville a tell mi seh ‘rain ago fall so drop down the tarpaulin weh the chicken dem deh’, so mi do that for her. Mi seh to her mek sure you buy patty fi mi,” he said, as he recalled his last conversation with her on the day she went missing.

“Monday from inna the day she left out and she nuh come back,” he added.

A report from the constabulary’s Corporate Communications Unit said about 8:50 am on Tuesday, residents stumbled on Saunders’s body and alerted the police.

However, residents told the Jamaica Observer that the body was found on Tuesday afternoon.

The police said Saunders’s hands and feet were bound.

Residents said she lived in Top Greenvale with her spouse, but was not popularly known in the adjoining area of Bethel Street.

“Mi coulda never feel good, mi cry about it. I don’t know her. All I know is she come from Clarendon, but a Top Greenvale she live,” a resident, who asked not to be named, said.

The resident, like many others who spoke with the Observer, were very disturbed by the woman’s death.

“Me frighten sah mi can’t believe… Mi have daughter and grandchildren and when mi hear it mi cry over it,” said the resident.

Another resident, who also did not to be identified, was shocked.

“Me come see police go up and down inna the community Tuesday. Mi cyaa feel good about this, a right inna mi community. We naa look for these things to happen,” he said.

Other residents were fearful that Greenvale could erupt like in previous years with violence and return to being on the police’s no party permit list.

“The whole place tense, because fi know seh the place under stigma and fi know seh something like this happen everybody tense and feel a way bout it,” a businessman in the community said.

“The likkle party dem just start keep again and the place did a get nice, so such a tragedy happening like this now it put the place under pressure,” he added.

“Is nuh matter what kind of work she (Saunders) do or if she and somebody did have an issue, she is a human being. The way how dem did wan dispose of her body is shocking. Only inna the movies mi see things like these,” he said.