Derek Achong

A man from east Port-of-Spain has been cleared of shoot­ing at a group of po­lice of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing now Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, over two decades ago.

Ken Fos­ter, of Char­ford Court, was ac­quit­ted of sev­er­al crim­i­nal charges at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas on Tues­day morn­ing.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas found the pros­e­cu­tion had not proven its case be­yond rea­son­able doubt, re­ject­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny of Alexan­der and his for­mer col­leagues. “Look­ing at the ev­i­dence as a whole, I am not sure the ac­cused shot at any­one. I am not sure he was in pos­ses­sion of a firearm or am­mu­ni­tion,” the judge said.

Fos­ter was ac­cused of shoot­ing at Alexan­der, Phillip Forbes, An­drew Lawrence, and Vic­tor Gra­ham with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm and of il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion. The al­leged in­ci­dent oc­curred on April 3, 2002, when the of­fi­cers were re­spond­ing to a re­port of a stolen ve­hi­cle in Mor­vant.

They claimed that as they pur­sued a ve­hi­cle along La­dy Young Road, Fos­ter, who was in the front pas­sen­ger seat, shot at them twice—first dur­ing the chase and again when the car stopped near a walkover. Alexan­der re­port­ed­ly re­turned fire, hit­ting Fos­ter in the but­tocks.

Fos­ter did not take the stand but, through his at­tor­ney Pe­ter Carter, claimed he was framed af­ter re­fus­ing to iden­ti­fy then-re­put­ed gang leader Ker­win “Fresh” Phillip as a pas­sen­ger in the car.

Carter ques­tioned the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the of­fi­cers’ state­ments, the ab­sence of sta­tion di­ary notes, and prob­lems with the chain of cus­tody for the firearm, am­mu­ni­tion, and spent shells al­leged­ly re­cov­ered from the scene.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas agreed with Carter’s con­cerns, es­pe­cial­ly re­gard­ing un­ex­plained changes to mark­ings on the ev­i­dence. “These dis­crep­an­cies leave the court in doubt,” he said.