Body found in burnt-out car

The St James police say they are now on the verge of identifying a man whose skeletal remains were discovered in a burnt-out motor vehicle in the Torado Heights area of the parish on Sunday.

Investigators say about 7:30 a.m., a farmer discovered a burnt-out Nissan AD Wagon motor car on a dirt road. The farmer stumbled upon what appeared to be the burnt remains of a human being and summoned the Coral Gardens police. Upon the arrival of the lawmen, it was discovered that the remains were that of a male. The scene was processed and the remains removed to the morgue for a post-mortem. One senior investigator told THE STAR that police have carried out a series of investigations and a breakthrough is close.

"Since that discovery, we have managed to work with various leads and should get a positive identity on the victim by this afternoon," the senior officer said. "We also have reason to believe that the victim was taken to the location where he was killed and his body set on fire inside the vehicle."

"This section of the parish is generally used as a bypass by persons travelling to Rose Hall from Salt Spring and Flower Hill communities. So we are unable to give a report as to direction where the vehicle travelled from," the lawman added.

The cop also pointed out that over that past week there has been a flare-up of incidents in and around the nearby Salt Spring community, which resulted in two persons being shot and killed.

"We cannot clearly say if this incident is connected in any way with last week's killing of another unidentified male in Salt Spring or Monday morning's murder of another man in the community. But we can safely say we are working with leads which we hope will allow us to make a breakthrough into the motives surrounding these spate of murders over the next few days," the cop said.