JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The rel­a­tives of 28-year-old An­dell Lee are de­mand­ing an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to his fa­tal shoot­ing by po­lice in St Barbs, Laven­tille, on Thurs­day, in­sist­ing the of­fi­cial ac­count of the in­ci­dent does not match what fam­i­ly mem­bers and res­i­dents say oc­curred.

Lee’s sis­ter, Anel­ka, said the fam­i­ly was strug­gling to come to terms with his death, es­pe­cial­ly as their moth­er, a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer, died last year.

The fa­ther of two is re­port­ed to have opened fire on po­lice of­fi­cers when they vis­it­ed his First Ham­let Trace, St Barbs home around 4 am on Thurs­day.

Asked how the fam­i­ly was cop­ing with Lee’s death, Anel­ka said the killing was dif­fi­cult to ac­cept.

“It’s very heart­break­ing, know­ing that, be­cause, not to say they didn’t know who he was, they knew who he was. It’s dif­fi­cult to deal with,” she said, adding that the of­fi­cers came ask­ing for Lee by his moth­er’s maid­en name.

Speak­ing out­side the fam­i­ly’s home yes­ter­day, Anel­ka re­ject­ed claims that the shoot­ing was jus­ti­fied.

“This was a hit. If he was a want­ed man, they could have dealt with it much bet­ter. Know­ing this was his ad­dress, be­cause this is not the first time they came look­ing for him.”

Ac­cord­ing to Lee, rel­a­tives on­ly learned of the shoot­ing af­ter re­ceiv­ing a phone call from some­one in the com­mu­ni­ty and rushed to hos­pi­tal seek­ing in­for­ma­tion.

She al­so ac­cused of­fi­cers of treat­ing the fam­i­ly in­sen­si­tive­ly.

The griev­ing sis­ter fur­ther ques­tioned po­lice de­scrip­tions of the prop­er­ty as aban­doned, say­ing util­i­ty bills had been paid and elec­tric­i­ty ser­vice was ac­tive.

A res­i­dent who lives near the scene al­so dis­put­ed parts of the po­lice ver­sion of events. The man, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said he was awak­ened by gun­fire and ob­served por­tions of the shoot­ing in­ci­dent from his win­dow. Ac­cord­ing to him, the shoot­ing did not sound like an ex­change of gun­fire.

“It sound­ed like one shot, then a lit­tle while, then an­oth­er shot, then a lit­tle while again, then a third shot,” he claimed.

He fur­ther claimed that he nev­er saw of­fi­cers re­cov­er ei­ther a firearm or bal­lis­tic vest from the scene, de­spite re­ports that such items were found.

“All I see they came out with is a life­less body,” he al­leged.

Both the res­i­dent and Lee’s rel­a­tives ques­tioned whether po­lice had ex­haust­ed oth­er op­tions be­fore em­ploy­ing dead­ly force.

“If a man is want­ed by the law, hand­cuff him and car­ry him to the sta­tion,” the res­i­dent said.

“We want jus­tice for this. We need to get jus­tice. If this is how the sys­tem op­er­ates, then com­mu­ni­ties will have to lash back at this. Be­cause this could hap­pen to any­body. I and all fright­ened for my life. This could hap­pen to any­body. And I’m a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen and I don’t like what I saw.”

The man al­so ex­pressed scep­ti­cism that the fam­i­ly would re­ceive jus­tice, high­light­ing oth­er po­lice-in­volved fa­tal shoot­ings that sparked protests and pub­lic out­cry but yield­ed no mean­ing­ful re­sults.

When con­tact­ed for a com­ment yes­ter­day, the head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty re­newed his call for po­lice of­fi­cers to use their body-worn cam­eras as man­dat­ed by the gov­ern­ing code of con­duct and for the po­lice lead­er­ship to pur­chase more cam­eras, with the in­sis­tence that they be used.

He added that with the 30-plus in­ci­dents to date, the PCA was not sup­plied with any footage from body cam­eras.