MONTEGO BAY, St James — Nicole Bingham could not hide the tears as she tried to come to grips with the reality that her child’s father, Alex Medley, was killed Tuesday morning.

Thirty-year-old Medley and two other men, identified as Rojay Duncan and Max, were shot and killed during an alleged shootout with the police in the St James community of Hellgate in Orange about 6:00 am.

Bingham’s biggest worry is about her eight-year-old, fathered by Medley.

“I don’t know what I’m going to say to my son. I told him about it but I don’t even know. Him cry and him just a look but I don’t know what to do,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

She said her child, who celebrated his birthday earlier this month, has been left shocked by news of his father’s death.

Though they did not live together, Bingham said she and Medley were on good terms; he was at her house Monday evening before later retiring to his, which he rented just metres up the road.

Bingham told the Observer what she said she heard in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

“Him call us and told us police in the yard up there where they were. When him tell me that, my big son come up and said police in the lane,” she related.

“I said let me go and check if none in my yard but when I come out, none was in my yard and then little bit after that mi hear the gunshot them,” she said between sobs.

The police said the men were killed after they went to a premises in the community searching for an individual connected to several crimes.

“One of the persons would have been identified by virtue of intelligence that suggests he is one of the key persons in relation to the flare-up of violence in the Rose Heights area,” said Area One police chief, Assistant Commissioner Glenford Miller.

He said cops were looking for a man whom they believed to be connected to the recent murder of social media influencer Marlon Samuels, otherwise called “41 Busshead” when they came under attack.

“My police officers were on an operation in that space there looking for persons of interest in relation to the recent flare-up in Rose Heights district where we have seen murders and shootings, reprisal and counter-reprisal,” the lawman stated.

“They were greeted by gunfire from this premises where three men fired at our police officers. They would have returned the fire and these three men were fatally shot. Three firearms were recovered during this operation also,” said ACP Miller.

However, Bingham and other residents of the area have disputed the police version of events.

“I hear when him bawl out before them kill him. Three of them; the police kill him and two more youth,” she insisted.

“You know how long life a fight we and as it start turn up, the man them just come in and kill the youth them. Boy, I’m telling you, life unfair inno man, totally unfair,” she lamented.

Medley was described as caretaker for his younger siblings, a role taken on after their mother’s death years ago. Meanwhile Rojay Duncan’s grief-stricken mother cried uncontrollably and repeatedly called out her son’s name as she clung to a man for support just outside the community’s entrance.

Hellgate was tense Tuesday afternoon, with some residents openly berating cops who stood guard near an area cordoned off with crime scene tape. Many openly expressed scepticism about the police report that guns had been seized during the confrontation.

“Them no have no gun. The police them gone with a bag a while ago ‘bout three gun and I know nothing don’t go so; is money them take from the youths,” alleged one woman, with no supporting proof.

“Me feel it man, from morning a running belly me have,” she said.

Another resident said the police have been picking on the three now-deceased men for a while.

“Them na kill nobody, them na fire gun, them na do nothing,” he argued.

Residents also claimed cops took a woman, who was at the house at the time of the incident, into custody but the police have not confirmed this.

The Independent Commission of Investigations has launched an investigation into the matter, as it routinely does for any fatal shooting involving the police. It noted, in a press release, that “no body-worn cameras were reported as issued or worn during this planned operation”.