FRIENDLY FIRE POLICE COVER-UP?
As accused walks free, new questions emerge of police conspiracy
ACHORUS of outrage and condemnation erupted five days before Christmas in 2013 after news broke that gunmen had shot and killed a district constable and wounded one of his colleagues, a female corporal, as they attempted to arrest a wanted man in August Town, a gritty community in eastern St Andrew.
But almost six years later, evidence has emerged which, according to the attorneys for the accused killer Jermaine Chambers, suggests that District Constable Paul White was killed and Corporal Desrene Hyatt injured in a case of friendly fire.
Further, a document obtained exclusively by The Gleaner appears to show that the three-person police team, led by Hyatt, ignored the instructions of their superiors when they embarked on the ill-fated mission to arrest Chambers.
Chambers walked from the Home Circuit Court a free man at the end of his murder trial last Thursday.
In the hours after the 2013 incident, White and Hyatt had been hailed for their valour.
“District Constable White and the woman corporal demonstrated great bravery, as they were attacked in the process of apprehending one of the most wanted men in the St Andrew Central Division,” the Police High Command said in a statement issued at the time.
But among the evidence produced during
Chambers’ murder trial is the report of a police ballistic expert. It appears to blow a hole in the account given by Hyatt in a witness statement detailing the sequence of events that unfolded near a bar in a section of August Town known as ‘Open Land’ on December 20, 2013.
Hyatt, in her sworn statement given on December 27, 2013, denied firing her police-issued Glock pistol during the incident.
Chambers’ Gun Court trial was closed to the public, but prosecutor Adley Duncan and defence attorneys Valerie Neita-Robertson and Kimberli Williams confirmed that Hyatt also insisted, while testifying in court, that she had not fired her weapon.
A third cop, a police constable, indicated, in his statement, that he had fired his weapon. White’s police-issued Glock pistol was never recovered.
The two guns, along with another Glock pistol, were sent to the Government Forensic Laboratory for testing. A ballistic report cited during the trial concluded that Hyatt’s weapon was fired, while the gun issued to the third cop was not fired.
Neita-Robertson, citing the statement of a female civilian who was also wounded in the gunfire, theorised that White’s death was the result of a “genuine accident and mistake”. In addition, she said the findings of the ballistic report exposed “elements of a cover-up”.
“It contradicted the claim that she did not fire and it also contradicted the other police officer who said that he fired,” she asserted.
According to court documents: “Microscopic comparison of evidence with test-fired bullets from [Hyatt’s gun] revealed matching of the strations, that is to say, it was discharged from the barrel of [Hyatt’s gun].” Examination conducted on evidence revealed that the third cop’s gun had not been fired.