ST CATHERINE, Jamaica —Commanding officer for the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) area five, Assistant Commissioner of police (ACP) Christopher Phillips, says the fatal shooting in the community of Commodore in Linstead that claimed the lives of five people, including a child, may be linked to gang violence.

Phillips made the revelation during an interview with Observer Online on Monday.

“As you are aware, last night we had a very unfortunate situation in the community of Commodore where nine persons were impacted, five eventually died from the attack by gunmen, men posing as police officers, stormed into a residence along Commodore Road. We are strongly of the view that it is gang violence that is playing out in Commodore. We have been monitoring the space for a while, and fortunately, for over a year, we haven’t had any such situation in the Commodore space and so, you know, it is a shocker to us. A very, very awful scene, I must say. You go on a scene and you’ll see even the dog was killed,” he said.

Reports are that gunfire, posing as police, attacked a family yard in the community, leaving nine people shot, five of them fatally, including a four-year-old child, a student of Rosemont Primary and Infant School.

ACP Phillips noted that the other four individuals are now in the hospital in serious condition.

“So far, we have the other persons in hospital conditions set to be serious, so we continue to monitor even that situation. But we’re not going to be daunted by it. We’re going to be doing some serious work. This has the attention of the high command and the entire country and so we know pretty soon we will have a breakthrough in this case,” he said.

Head of the St Catherine North Police Division, Senior Superintendent Hopeton Nicholson, on Monday assured the school community that the police will be relentless in their pursuit to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“I just want to assure you that we as law enforcement from the St Catherine North Division, we are going to do everything in our powers to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice and we are going to try to do that as quick as possible. We are going to use all legal means to pursue the suspects, and we are going to bring them to justice. In the meantime, we just want to offer our condolences as a police force to the school family, understanding that you are hurting. We understand that the community is hurting and that together we have to work to get rid of these criminals, to take them off the streets and to put them where they belong, have them incarcerated for as long as the law allows them to be,” SSP Nicholson said.

(Video: Llewellyn Wynter)

READ: 4-y-o among five killed by gunmen ‘posing as police’ in Linstead