Jensen La Vende

Po­lice shot and killed a 15-year-old boy yes­ter­day which is be­ing de­scribed by rel­a­tives as mur­der, while po­lice say it was a shootout with an armed "pest".

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports short­ly be­forenoon­they re­spond­ed to a re­port that a man with a gun was seen in some­one's yard off Main­got Road, Tu­na­puna. When the of­fi­cers re­spond­ed there was a shootout and the teen, Josi­ah Ram­sa­hai, was shot and tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex where he died. Po­lice said they re­cov­ered a 9mm pis­tol.

Po­lice said fol­low­ing the shoot­ing as they can­vassed the area search­ing for items of ev­i­den­tial val­ue, res­i­dents told them in hushed tones that they were grate­ful that Ram­sa­hai was dead since "he was a men­ace".

Ram­sa­hai, who lived at Dook­ie Trace, Tu­na­puna was re­leased on bail from the St Micheal's Home for Boys less than a month ago for firearm re­lat­ed of­fences which his rel­a­tives swore were "frame cas­es". Po­lice said Ram­sa­hai was on 13 charges in­clud­ing pos­ses­sion of firearm, pos­ses­sion of nar­cotics, rape and lar­ce­ny for of­fences al­leged­ly com­mit­ted this year and last year.

Speak­ing with the me­dia yes­ter­day at the fam­i­ly's home, Ram­sa­hai's aunt Afe­sha Ram­sa­hai, said her nephew was at home less than hour be­fore he was killed and they were dis­cussing what he want­ed for his 16 birth­day on­De­cem­ber 2. She added that her nephew left home and the next she heard of him was that he was shot.

"He call me and say 'Aun­ty Feisha I get shoot' and that was the last thing he tell me. When I ask him where, he didn't an­swer, up to now he ain't an­swer. Josi­ah is a ba­by he now start to live, he ain't even get his id card yet" she groaned.

Rel­a­tives said they were in­formed that Ram­sa­hai sur­ren­dered to po­lice and while he ran from them, he nev­er once fired at them. They said af­ter he was felled in a bushy area, he was dragged through mud and thrown in a po­lice van. One rel­a­tive said she heard the gun­shots that killed Ram­sa­hai. She count­ed six, but was told by doc­tors that he was shot some 17 times.

Ram­sa­hai was a school dropout from the Aran­juez North Sec­ondary School and was due to be­gin class­es in elec­tri­cal work at the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC) in Jan­u­ary. He was due to grad­u­ate from sec­ondary school next year had he not dropped out.

At the fam­i­ly's home, rel­a­tives said Ram­sa­hai was the tar­get of a par­tic­u­lar of­fi­cer at­tached to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion. They claimed that for over a year the of­fi­cer­had­been pes­ter­ing Ram­sa­hai, even go­ing as far as threat­en­ing to kill him. To cor­rob­o­rate their claim the rel­a­tives showed a re­port stamped and dat­ed by the Po­lice Com­plaints Di­vi­sion against two of­fi­cers.

Ram­sa­hai added: "Right now the fam­i­ly in sham­bles, he lost his fa­ther on the same street that he get shoot. His fa­ther was killed in a dri­ve-by a few years ago in that same street (Pasea Ex­ten­sion). He is his moth­er's fourth child, she have eight, how she sup­posed to cope now?"

The fam­i­ly said po­lice were, "wicked", "spite­ful" and un­trust­wor­thy and asked "How we sup­posed to trust them now?"

On­ly­Wednes­day­act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams called on the pub­lic to trust his of­fi­cers as he ad­mit­ted to hav­ing 150 of them be­fore the court for var­i­ous of­fences.

In re­sponse to the claims of mur­der, po­lice said they have a state­ment from an in­de­pen­dent eye-wit­ness who claimed to have seen Ram­sa­hai not on­ly run­ning from po­lice but shoot­ing at them. The man claimed that in this shootout his ve­hi­cle was struck three times by bul­lets from Ram­sa­hai's gun.