Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The 59-year-old fa­ther of Akeem Williams, who was fa­tal­ly shot by the po­lice in Mara­bel­la on Wednes­day, is claim­ing that his son was ex­e­cut­ed.

Even though he called for jus­tice, Patrick “Box­er” Williams ad­mit­ted he has lit­tle con­fi­dence in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, but he wants a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how his son died.

The fa­ther said there were eye­wit­ness­es who could con­firm that his son was un­armed and had sur­ren­dered when the po­lice shot him.

He said his son had gone to check on friends near the jet­ty on the train­line in Bayshore when they saw a man run­ning from the po­lice who were shoot­ing at him. He (man) ran past Williams and jumped in­to the riv­er.

He said his son raised his hands in the air to sur­ren­der be­cause he was afraid, but the po­lice in­struct­ed him to lie on the ground and shot him in the shoul­der.

While the po­lice were deal­ing with the oth­er man, he said, Williams rolled off the jet­ty in­to the wa­ter.

“Re­mem­ber, if some­body shoot you, you will be fright­en for your life,” he said.

They stand up on his head and hit him about three more shots. Take up the body and gone in the hos­pi­tal.”

He claimed the po­lice stripped off his son’s clothes ex­cept his box­ers be­fore tak­ing him to the hos­pi­tal.

“Maybe it have foren­sic ev­i­dence on his clothes,” he said.

Deny­ing that there was a shootout be­tween Williams and the po­lice, he said, “My son had no gun. He give up him­self and let them know he have a lil child, a ba­by. They ask him his name, and when he tell them, they shoot him. How it look, it look like ex­e­cu­tion,” he lament­ed.

The fa­ther of nine said Williams was work­ing three jobs: as a forestry work­er, a se­cu­ri­ty guard and a crab catch­er. Williams’ two-year-old daugh­ter, the el­der of his two chil­dren, had open heart surgery re­cent­ly and is still ward­ed at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex.

De­tails sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent have not been dis­closed by the po­lice. An of­fi­cer said the po­lice were con­duct­ing a crime op­er­a­tion when “shots were fired.”

TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Joanne Archie, as­sured that a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion was on­go­ing and urged mem­bers of the pub­lic with in­for­ma­tion to come for­ward.

Calls and mes­sages to the cell­phone of ACP South/Cen­tral Wayne Mys­tar went unan­swered.