I DID kill cop.. it was an accident
Ex of Lord Ashcroft’s son pleads guilty to Belize pier shooting
THE former partner of Tory grandee Lord Ashcroft’s son has pleaded guilty to accidentally shooting a police chief dead in Belize.
Jasmine Hartin, 42, broke down in tears as she entered her plea at the Supreme Court in the capital Belize City, where she was due to go on trial for Henry Jemmott’s manslaughter.
Outside the court, the Canadian socialite said: “I just want Henry’s family to have peace now and I want this whole thing behind all of us so we can heal.”
Sentencing is expected to take place on May 31. The legal precedent for a guilty plea to manslaughter by negligence is a non-custodial sentence and a fine. Judge Ricardo Sandcroft said he was unlikely to “veer away” from it.
Father-of-five Supt Jemmott’s sisters and his daughter were in court to hear Hartin’s admission.
Hartin, who has two children with Andrew Ashcroft, was found with blood on her hands after shooting her friend Mr Jemmott, 42, dead with a
9mm round in May 2021.
On the night of the shooting, Hartin, who moved to Belize in 2015, and Mr Jemmott drank wine and whiskey at the Banana Beach resort.
According to police documents, the pair were “socialising” on the pier when security heard a “loud bang” and raced to the scene at 12.45am.
There they found Hartin “covered in red substance as that of blood” as Mr Jemmott’s body floated on his back 30ft from the shore. “The body of Henry Jemmott was later retrieved by the police where one apparent gunshot wound was observed at the back of the right ear,” the criminal complaint read.
It continued: “The clothing of Jasmine which contained red substance as that of blood were retrieved and packaged also her hands which also contained red substance as blood were swabbed.”
Hartin claimed Mr Jemmott had given her the Glock gun to practice after a man harassed her.
“He told me I needed to get a gun for my own personal protection,” she told detectives.
During the investigation into the officer’s death, she told police: “I picked up
I just want his family to have peace and I want this behind us JASMINE HARTIN AFTER HER GUILTY PLEA IN BELIZE
the gun and tried to eject the magazine clip, but it was stuck. I struggled with it, trying to get the magazine out when the gun suddenly went off.
“I had no idea it still had a bullet in the chamber.”
Andrew Ashcroft once described Hartin as his “wife”, but according to a spokesman for his billionaire family, they were never married.
In May last year, he was granted custody of the former couple’s twins, a boy and a girl. Mr Ashcroft, 45, said in a statement he had since left Belize for the Turks and Caicos Islands.