Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an has ex­pressed con­cern that "in­ap­pro­pri­ate and prej­u­di­cial" com­ments were made about the killing of Mt D'Or res­i­dent At­i­ba Dun­can be­fore in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tions could be con­duct­ed. In a short state­ment is­sued through the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd (GISL) yes­ter­day, Dook­er­an said: "It is un­for­tu­nate that un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed state­ments have been made re­gard­ing the re­cent death of At­i­ba Dun­can."

In re­sponse to a ques­tion put to him on the is­sue, the act­ing Prime Min­is­ter said: "The in­de­pen­dence and in­tegri­ty of the process should not be sul­lied by pre­ma­ture judg­ments and pub­lic pro­nounce­ments." He said at the end of the day, the truth will pre­vail and jus­tice served.

"While it is un­der­stand­able how the trag­ic cir­cum­stances can pro­duce an emo­tion­al­ly charged at­mos­phere," Dook­er­an added, "im­prop­er re­ac­tion by those in au­thor­i­ty can­not be al­lowed to com­pro­mise the very process through which jus­tice is sought and de­liv­ered."

Dook­er­an's com­ments were made days af­ter his Cab­i­net col­league Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney stirred up con­tro­ver­sy by de­clar­ing that Dun­can was the vic­tim of a homi­ci­dal killing. Vol­ney's com­ments were crit­i­cised by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and sev­er­al oth­ers in law en­force­ment and le­gal cir­cles and the me­dia. Dook­er­an is the first gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial to speak out on Vol­ney's com­ments.