Man seeking $500,000 for love-triangle injuries
‘My advice to Omar is just to continue to focus on [himself ] and believe in the things that [he] can do. He’s just got to block out everybody else and concentrate on himself. Ultimately, nobody else can do it for Omar but Omar.’
A 40-YEAR-OLD man who flung a stone and hit another man outside the home of his child’s mother in a fit of jealousy, was instructed to “start saving” after the injured man told the court that he is seeking $500,000 for his injuries.
The injured man, who said he was seated inside his car when he was attacked by the offender, Oneil Simms, informed Parish Judge Lori-ann Cole-montague in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on Wednesday that his left thumb was seriously injured and he has a surgery that is pending.
Based on the medical report that was presented by the 59-year-old complainant, his thumb was dislocated, among other things.
The incident occurred on New Year’s Day in Meadowbrook, St Andrew.
According to the man who is charged with unlawful wounding, on the day in question he went to the home in Meadowbrook, which he shares with his 27-year-old girlfriend and was surprised to see the complainant parked outside. They got into a fight.
But this was quickly dismissed by the complainant. “It’s all a lie!” he said.
According to the complainant, he and the woman in question (who both men are claiming as theirs), were involved first and had been living together for four years until she started working and met Simms. The complainant further told the court that the woman and Simms developed an intimate relationship and she later got pregnant by him, which caused his relationship with her to end.
However, the complainant said he and the woman have now rekindled their relationship, as she is no longer with Simms.
But Simms said he and the woman have been living together in Meadowbrook in a house which her father bought for them, as he does not want her living with the complainant. According to Simms, he has another house in Vineyard Town, St Andrew where they were living first and that was where he was coming from on the day when he found the complainant parked outside.
But the complainant insisted that Simms was lying. “She and this man are not together,”he maintained. The judge then asked him if he has seen her since the incident and he replied by saying, “She was with me up until last night”.
Judge Cole-montague then told Simms that he was wrong to have attacked the complainant.
“It’s not suh you must deal with things; all of us have things happen to us that bun wi,” she said.
She then enquired from the complainant how much he has spent on medical expenses so far and he showed her receipts totalling $70,000, which includes one for a magnetic resonance imaging scan.
The judge then instructed the complainant to get a letter from the doctor to bring to the court indicating the cost of the surgery.
She then turned to the offender and said, “Mr Simms, what I will say to you is start saving,” despite her earlier utterance that $500,000 was pricey.
“The complainant out of pocket comes up to $70,000 so walk with that on the next court date,” she added before extending his bail.
Freeman backs Mcleod to repeat Olympic success
THE 1997 World Indoor 60-metre hurdles champion, Michelle Freeman, is backing Omar Mcleod all the way, as he seeks to defend his Olympic title.
According to Freeman, who is now a coach at the University of Virginia, the 2016 Olympic 110-metre hurdles winner will have to focus on himself to reach his goal.
“I watch Omar over the years, and Omar is a great sprinter as well as a great hurdler,” Freeman assessed from the dual perspective of both being a coach and as a former hurdler herself.
“My advice to Omar is just to continue to focus on [himself ] and believe in the things that [he] can do. He’s just got to block out everybody else and concentrate on himself. Ultimately, nobody else can do it for Omar but Omar,” added Freeman.
FINDING THE BALANCE
With her own experience as a guide, the 1994 Commonwealth Games 100 hurdles champion believes Mcleod and his coach will find the balance between his 9.99 second 100-metre speed and his hurdling technique.
“It all just depends on his coach, I can’t tell him how to do it. To be honest, as you get going in the race, there’s nothing that you can control. You can’t control it. You just gotta let it go,” she said, perhaps with her own encounters with excess speed in mind.
In 1992, after becoming the first nonAmerican to win her event at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, she clattered a late race barrier in the Olympic quarter-finals.
“How him and his coach work that out, it’s not something that I can explain, because, to be honest, it’s not something you can like press the brake on,” Freeman added.
In addition to the Olympic gold medal four years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Mcleod took top spot at the 2016 World Indoors and the 2017 World Championships in London.
However, an injury stopped him in the 2019 World Championships won by tall American newcomer, Grant Holloway.
Freeman, who won Jamaica’s first major sprint hurdles medal with a bronze at the 1997 Worlds, thinks focus will aid Mcleod in his quest in Tokyo.
A success for Mcleod would make him the third 110-metre hurdler to retain the Olympic title after Americans Lee Calhoun and Roger Kingdom. Since Kingdom did it in 1984 and 1988, Cuba’s Anier Garcia has come closest to going two straight. Garcia won at the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia, and collected the bronze medal four years later in Athens, Greece, when Allen Johnson of the United
States triumphed.
Mcleod made a bright return to hurdling with a controlled run, timed in 7.53 seconds over the 60-metre barriers in Fayetteville,
Arkansas, on February 7. It was his first hurdles race since the 2019 World Championships final.