Joshua Seemu­n­gal

More than three years af­ter a group of heav­i­ly-armed men in po­lice and De­fence Force uni­forms killed three men in their beds in their grand­moth­er’s Waller­field home, the moth­er of the young men killed says she’s no clos­er to see­ing jus­tice be­ing served.

With­out an up­date from the Po­lice Ser­vice about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, she is con­vinced that the case is be­ing cov­ered up.

On Jan­u­ary 16, 2020, a group of men, who iden­ti­fied them­selves as po­lice, en­tered the house through a win­dow and shot dead 16-year-old Jor­dan Archibald, 19-year-old Dim­itri Cust and 24-year-old Ny­ron Samuel.

A fourth man, Mar­lon Cust, now 28 years old, was shot 18 times and was left paral­ysed.

His moth­er Lisa lost three of her bi­o­log­i­cal sons and a nephew–who she adopt­ed af­ter her sis­ter died from breast can­cer.

“It’s very dif­fi­cult for me. Every day I cry. Every day I cry. We have to feed him. We have to clean him. We have to brush his teeth. I can’t use a tooth­brush be­cause it’s got this bleed. His teeth got blown off by the bul­lets. He got 18 shots. 17 came out and one is still in him, close to his heart,” Lisa said while sob­bing.

Mar­lon has trou­ble speak­ing co­her­ent­ly, but he man­aged a few words about the night of the shoot­ing.

“The van of po­lice come and they start to shoot…They start to shake up the door and they say - this is po­lice…This is the po­lice…I get plen­ty of bul­lets and one of the bul­lets can’t come out…When I heard about my broth­ers, I just start to cry,” he said, soft­ly, with great dif­fi­cul­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Lisa, who didn’t want to pro­vide her full name out of con­cerns for her safe­ty, through­out the day be­fore the shoot­ing, po­lice and de­fence force of­fi­cers were pa­trolling and search­ing the area.

Her daugh­ter, who lived with her broth­ers, said the group of armed of­fi­cers came to the house with a piece of pa­per with some names on it, and said that they had in­for­ma­tion that the men they were look­ing for resided at the house.

Lisa’s moth­er, who owned the home, said she told the of­fi­cers that no one by those names lived there.

“They in­sist­ed that the peo­ple they were look­ing for lived at that house. One of the of­fi­cers had a phone and he took pic­tures of the house that very said evening and then they left. We thought they left but they didn’t leave be­cause my cousin saw po­lice swarm­ing all down the high­way, po­lice and sol­diers lat­er that evening.

“Even neigh­bours saw po­lice, we weren’t the on­ly peo­ple that were in­ter­ro­gat­ed that day, there were oth­er neigh­bours that were al­so in­ter­ro­gat­ed by the po­lice. They were search­ing peo­ple from house to house,” Lisa re­called.

Then, in the ear­ly hours of the fol­low­ing day, Lisa got a call from her daugh­ter. She could hear screams in the back­ground.

It was clear some­thing was wrong, but she sim­ply couldn’t be­lieve it when her daugh­ter said her four broth­ers had been shot; three of them had al­ready been pro­nounced dead.

“They were in full uni­form and they had their guns across them and the guns strapped on­to their legs. They had one mask, their ski mask, black, over their face. They take the blocks that we had in the yard that we were build­ing, the foun­da­tion blocks and they put a height and they rack, rack the win­dow. My mum said she heard the win­dow but she didn’t re­al­ly take it on.

“But when she heard it rack­ing, rack­ing, rack­ing, she thought it was a ban­dit. And when they opened the win­dow and broke it open, they jumped through the win­dow and land­ed on her bed. They point­ed the gun at her, she said, and the oth­er of­fi­cer who was be­hind us, two of them, told her the first one, do not shoot the old la­dy. And then they start­ed to fire shots at my chil­dren who were sleep­ing,” Lisa said.

Eight days af­ter her three sons were buried, she said the po­lice and de­fence force of­fi­cers re­turned to the house and ran­sacked it.

Last Ju­ly, she said, a cou­ple of of­fi­cers vis­it­ed her, say­ing they were there to get her fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from the crim­i­nal in­juries com­pen­sa­tion board.

But since then, she’s heard noth­ing.

“One of the of­fi­cers said that if it’s the po­lice who had done it, they would be dealt with by the law,” she said.

While she’s los­ing hope, she still prays that one day she will get ‘jus­tice’ for the death of her beloved sons.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Di­rec­tor David West said the au­thor­i­ty ini­ti­at­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing.

He said the PCA is in the process of gath­er­ing sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence and oth­er ev­i­dence like sta­tion di­ary re­ports.

At­tempts to reach Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Cristo­pher for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

Yes­ter­day, the Sun­day Guardian told the sto­ry of the moth­er of Joel Ap­pari­cio. The un­armed 31-year-old was shot dead by a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer in San Juan in Jan­u­ary 2014.

De­spite con­fir­ma­tion from PCA Di­rec­tor David West that he sub­mit­ted a file to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on Jan­u­ary 6, 2015, for con­sid­er­a­tion of the ev­i­dence, no ar­rests or charges have been made in re­la­tion to Ap­pari­cio’s death.