Jensen La Vende

The po­lice of­fi­cer charged with knock­ing down a pen­sion­er and leav­ing him for dead along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, St Joseph, two weeks ago ap­peared in court yes­ter­day but was not charged with caus­ing the man's death.Con­sta­ble Mar­vin Burke, 38, who has 20 years ser­vice, plead­ed not guilty to charges of fail­ing to ren­der as­sis­tance fol­low­ing an ac­ci­dent and fail­ing to re­port an ac­ci­dent.The ac­ci­dent claimed the life of 65-year-old Ralph Abra­ham.

Po­lice say they are await­ing in­struc­tions from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions be­fore he is charged with caus­ing the man's death.Around 8 pm on Au­gust 17, Abra­ham was re­turn­ing to his home at Agos­ti­ni Street, St Joseph, when he was struck by a ve­hi­cle while at­tempt­ing to cross the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route.He died in­stant­ly. An au­top­sy done by pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov re­vealed he suf­fered a frac­tured rib cage, punc­tured lung and liv­er, a rup­tured heart and three spinal frac­tures.

He was struck from be­hind and his body was flung sev­er­al feet in­to the air up­on im­pact. His legs were al­so frac­tured.Burke, who was as­signed to the San­ta Cruz Po­lice Sta­tion, ap­peared be­fore mag­is­trate Siu­mun­gal Ram­saran and is ex­pect­ed to re-ap­pear in court to­day when is­sues re­lat­ing to his bail are ex­pect­ed to be sort­ed out.The of­fi­cer, who was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Denyse Gou­veia, was grant­ed $25,000 bail at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion on Sat­ur­day af­ter spend­ing five days in cus­tody.

He was al­lowed to leave af­ter de­posit­ing $15,000.Ram­saran or­dered Burke to re­turn to­day to en­sure that all the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to his bail was up to stan­dard be­fore he en­dors­es his pre­vi­ous bail.Ram­saran has the pow­er to al­ter the bail and even re­voke it.Gou­veia asked that all rel­e­vant doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the case be dis­closed to her at the near­est con­ve­nience as she hopes that the mat­ter would be­gin on Sep­tem­ber 26.

She added that her client was in cus­tody since Tues­day and she was ea­ger to get the mat­ter start­ed.