THE Spanish Town police said yesterday that Thursday night’s shooting death of two men during an organisational meeting of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the old capital was not linked to politics.

The men — Samuel Walters, alias Lion, 29, of Windsor Road, and Oneil Smith, 25, — were shot on the compound of McCauley’s All-Age School, just off the Spanish Town bypass, while the meeting was in progress inside a classroom.

The JLP, in a statement yesterday afternoon, claimed the attack represented the continuation of a military solution by the government to harm and kill its supporters “in a desperate and dangerous attempt to weaken JLP support for the upcoming general election”.

But detectives probing the killings linked them to a feud which followed a robbery last August in Spanish Town.

The police said their investigations showed that both victims were armed. One of them, the police said, was actually shot by the other victim at about 8:00 pm. But, within seconds, the shooter himself was gunned down by the first victim’s cronies who were hanging around the area.

“It’s not a political killing and I have solid proof,” insisted one policeman in an interview with the Observer.

“Both men have had a dispute since the robbery of a jerk pork vendor in August last year. Following the incident, the man who stole the money was shot and injured and the money taken away,” said a police detective at the Spanish Town Police Station who did now want to be named.

The policeman said the man who did the shooting was pointed out to the injured man’s associates who, since that time, had been searching for him.

He did not say which one of the men was involved in the robbery or the amount of money stolen.

The bodies of the men, the Constabulary Communication Network said yesterday, had multiple gunshot wounds and were removed to the morgue for post-mortem. One 9mm expended round was taken from the scene.

Dr Errol Williamson, the JLP’s caretaker for South St Catherine, in an earlier interview said he was not aware of the results of the police investigations, but “I am hoping and praying that it is not political”.

Williamson, a 53-year-old medical doctor and political newcomer, described the bodies of the two men lying on the ground as the most horrendous sight.

“When I look I said ‘oh God, two more lives snuffed out’. I could not believe it.”

Williamson, who has been working in the constituency since November last year, said the party supporters were all having a good time when an explosion was heard. “We thought it was in the classroom and at the end of the shooting we looked around to see if anybody was bleeding.”

He said members left the classroom in groups and while in the schoolyard they realised that two men were lying on the ground. Some of the persons who were in the meeting went directly to the police station in Spanish Town after the shooting.