ST ANDREW, Jamaica – St Andrew South police have taken two men into custody in relation to a shooting incident on a passenger bus along Spanish Town Road in the vicinity of Seaview Gardens last Friday.

It is reported that sometime after 3:00 pm, a man who was being chased by armed men boarded a bus in an attempt to escape his attackers. The gunmen however continued to fire shots into the public passenger vehicle injuring six persons including at least one child.

READ: Six injured in bus shooting on Spanish Town Road

Attributing the attack to an ongoing gang violence in the area, senior superintendent of police, Kirk Ricketts said investigations so far have yielded much success.

“In the St Andrew South space we tend to have gang on gang violence and it’s abnormal for innocent people to be caught up frequently with these types of incidents. It just so happened that last Friday, this was one of them. We had a gang type attack. Gang members attacked one of their opponents and this individual in an attempt to save his life, ran onto a bus,” he revealed. “The gang members continued to fire at him indiscriminately and we had a number of persons being injured in that incident. So far one would have succumbed.”

“We are working hard and so far we have two persons in custody for this incident. At Least one of the persons I’m sure will be charged for the relevant offences in short order. The other one will be placed on an ID parade and we are still in search of at least three other individuals in connection with this gang,” Ricketts continued. “We continue to give as much support as we can to the victims and the family members. We have come out to offer our condolences that such a tragic situation could have occurred in our space.”

SSP Ricketts said since the incident, a curfew has been imposed in the area and a number of operations have been carried out. According to him, said operations have resulted in a certain level of calm in the violence-ridden community.

“This conflict originated out of the Seaview Gardens community. Our response would have been a curfew immediately after the incident, we conducted a number of operations in the space and the result is that we have persons in custody and we’re still searching for others,” he said. “The situation in Seaview is still somewhat tense but we believe that our response would have put a damper on these activities. In fact, the two persons in custody now, we believe to be influential within that gap so we do expect a certain level of calm within the space – tense but calm.”