The family of a British girl who was shot during a holiday in Jamaica have told how they found the eight-year-old dying in a pool of blood.
Imani Green, from Balham, south London, was on holiday visiting relatives when she was killed in the the rural village of Duncans on Friday night, in what is believed to have been a revenge attack, the Associated Press said.
Imani's sister, Janella Parmer, told the BBC: "We heard gunshots. We ran outside and shouted 'Imani, Imani, Imani'."
Imani Green died after being shot twice in the head and shoulder
Joined by Imani's grandmother Sandra Fisher, the pair found the little girl lying in a pool of blood.
Parmer said: "I picked her up off the ground and realised she was still breathing. I flagged down a car and they drove us to hospital. The rest is history."
Fisher told LBC radio: “My two little granddaughters were there and when one came back I said ‘where is the baby.
“We went to the shop and I saw a little girl lying down in a pool of blood. I started to cry and everyone was crying and saying ‘ why did they kill the little girl?’”
The news comes after it was announced eight men have been arrested in connection with the shooting.
Deputy Supt Steve Brown, from Jamaica's police force, told BBC Breakfast: "We have taken people into custody as we search for a motive for the attack."
Imani, who attended Fircroft Primary School in Tooting, is reported to have suffered from blood condition sickle cell anaemia and had been allowed to take an extended New Year holiday by headteacher Anne Wilson.
Wilson told the BBC: "Imani was a happy, playful child who was popular with staff and pupils alike.
"She dealt with her illness very bravely and coped well with the special arrangements we had to have in place to support her.
"She had been given special permission to travel to Jamaica so that she could benefit from the warmer climate and we had been in contact with the local primary school she was attending."
The schoolgirl died after being shot twice by a gunman, once in the head and once in the shoulder, while visiting a grocery store and bar thought to be owned by a relative.
Three other people were also injured in the attack.
The high command of Jamaica's police force said that Imani was "mercilessly slaughtered in front of family members in a hail of bullets as gangsters sought to exact revenge on their rivals" in the normally quiet Red Dirt district of Duncans in Trelawny parish.
The island's government said the Falmouth police are conducting an "extensive investigation into the matter and will expend every effort to ensure that the perpetrator is apprehended and brought to justice".
Neighbours in Britain spoke of their sorrow following the girl's death.
One friend of the family, who asked not to be named, said: "This is a close-knit community, so this is going to hurt us."
Another added: "Nobody wants to speak, she was just a little girl. This is all so sad. We're distraught."
Neighbours said members of the girl's family left their home at Old Hospital Close for a flight to Jamaica early yesterday morning to be with Imani's mother Donna.
A man who answered the door at the three-storey property declined to speak to the press.
A British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spokesman said: "We can confirm the death of a British national in Jamaica on January 11.
"We are providing consular assistance and liaising with local authorities in Jamaica.
"We cannot comment further on cases involving minors."
Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan, MP for Tooting, said: "(I am) devastated to hear the news of eight-year-old schoolgirl Imani Green, a pupil at a Tooting primary school.
"This is terrible news."
Police told the BBC that there are a number of lines of inquiry, but one theory is that the shooting was in reprisal for an earlier gun attack.
Jamaica's security minister, Peter Bunting, condemned the killing.
He told the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper: "The senseless killing of a young, innocent child must outrage all well-thinking Jamaicans, and cause us to join our security forces in an intensified effort to rid our communities of criminals."
Bunting said he thought the little girl might have been caught up in a lottery scam reprisal attack.
He told Channel 4 News: "The initial report that I received from the police seems to suggest that this was a reprisal attack for a shooting late last year that was related to a lottery scam."
The minister said more than 500 murders over the past five years were connected to lottery scams.