Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing two of the men who were shot dead in Mor­vant on Sat­ur­day have writ­ten to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith seek­ing an ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the killings.

Au­top­sies yes­ter­day re­vealed that the three men died of ex­ter­nal and in­ter­nal haem­or­rhag­ing con­sis­tent with mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds.

Res­i­dents of Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant protest­ed yes­ter­day over the killings.

The pro­tes­tors blocked streets with tyres and oth­er de­bris which they lit on fire. Fire ap­pli­ances from the near­by Mor­vant and San Juan fire sta­tions re­spond­ed to ex­tin­guish fires in three lo­ca­tions.

The men, who were iden­ti­fied as Is­rael Clin­ton, Noel Di­a­mond and Joel Ja­cob were killed by po­lice af­ter be­ing stopped in a gold Ti­i­da ve­hi­cle while dri­ving along Sec­ond Cale­do­nia.

Fam­i­lies of Clin­ton and Di­a­mond sent a 16-page le­gal doc­u­ment by rep­re­sent­ing law firm CJ Williams & Co to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

“The in­ves­ti­ga­tion must de­ter­mine whether or not there was a breach of the right of life. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion must seek to iden­ti­fy not on­ly di­rect per­pe­tra­tors but al­so all oth­ers who were re­spon­si­ble for the death, in­clud­ing, for ex­am­ple, of­fi­cials in the chain of com­mand who were com­plic­it in the death.

“The in­ves­ti­ga­tion should seek to iden­ti­fy any fail­ure to take rea­son­able mea­sures which could have had a re­al prospect of pre­vent­ing the death. It should al­so seek to iden­ti­fy poli­cies and sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures that may have con­tributed to a death, and iden­ti­fy pat­terns where they ex­ist,” the let­ter stat­ed.

It al­so called for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be in­de­pen­dent and im­par­tial.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s protests, res­i­dents held their hands up in the air to re­flect CCTV footage that showed the dri­ver and Ja­cob do­ing the same, mo­ments be­fore they were killed.

Po­lice re­ports had stat­ed that Ja­cob, who had come out the ve­hi­cle, with his hands up, re­turned to the back seat of the car and point­ed a gun at one of the of­fi­cers, caus­ing them to open fire.

Noel Diamond

Clin­ton’s rel­a­tives who were at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day said they will do all the “right things” and “take all the right steps” to clear his name and to get jus­tice.

They dis­closed that six years ago Clin­ton was a vic­tim of se­vere po­lice bru­tal­i­ty and af­ter win­ning his mat­ter in court, was pur­su­ing a law­suit against the of­fi­cers in­volved.

“About six years ago he was beat­en by po­lice. He was in a car that crashed and every­body came out and ran but he re­mained and be­cause he did not tell the po­lice who was the dri­ver the po­lice beat him very bad­ly, frac­tur­ing his jaw and one of his foot was in cast for a while. He was even in the hos­pi­tal for three weeks and when he was dis­charged they charged him for steal­ing a car but he won his case and he was su­ing them now,” the rel­a­tive said.

The rel­a­tive asked, “For the past two years he was al­ways be­ing stopped by the po­lice and be­ing ha­rassed for no rea­son at all. He didn’t even know why. He was not the type to be lim­ing and drink­ing heavy rum and even smok­ing. He hus­tled as a pri­vate hired dri­ver for peo­ple in the area.”

Clin­ton was the fa­ther of three chil­dren aged sev­en, three and two. An­oth­er rel­a­tive said Clin­ton was tak­ing Ja­cob to get drinks and was then sup­posed to go and pick up his daugh­ter.

“Up to now the child keep ask­ing where her fa­ther is and the moth­er do not know what to tell her. His name is tar­nished right now be­cause first, it was all over that he had killed a po­lice of­fi­cer but that wasn’t so.”

“We ex­pect the po­lice to act on this sit­u­a­tion,” the rel­a­tive added.