CRIME DESK

An En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas man is call­ing for jus­tice af­ter his son and an­oth­er man were killed in an al­leged shootout with po­lice yes­ter­day.

Ster­ling Ray­mond Jnr and Nigel ‘Chap­py’ Ed­wards were killed in a shootout with po­lice a stone’s throw away from the Long­denville Po­lice Post just be­fore noon yes­ter­day.

The of­fi­cial re­port from po­lice stat­ed that around 11.45 am, of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion In­tel­li­gence Unit stopped a ve­hi­cle along the Long­denville Old Road. Po­lice said the ve­hi­cle, reg­is­tra­tion PDL 7094, was known to them. How­ev­er, the of­fi­cers said the men in the ve­hi­cle be­gan shoot­ing at them and in keep­ing with their use of force pol­i­cy, they re­turned fire.

Ray­mond Jnr and Ed­wards were hit and lat­er tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty by the po­lice, where they suc­cumbed to their in­juries. Both men were from Bha­ga­loo Trace, En­ter­prise.

But Ray­mond Jr’s fa­ther, Ster­ling Ray­mond Sr, told an­oth­er me­dia house the men were as­sas­si­nat­ed and has dis­put­ed the po­lice’s ver­sion of events. He claimed his son was set up in an edit­ed video that was post­ed on­line.

“If a van, a ve­hi­cle park up a stone throw from the sta­tion and al­lyuh in­ter­cept­ing the ve­hi­cle, al­lyuh will in­ter­cept the ve­hi­cle with the right cau­tion and al­lyuh did not take the right cau­tion, so I am say­ing to­day al­lyuh putting up vi­ral this video for a whole week and then kill them, then kill them, al­lyuh as­sas­si­nate them and I not putting wa­ter in my mouth, I could go next, I aged I is 57, al­lyuh could do what al­lyuh want,” Ray­mond Snr said.

The man said this was the sec­ond son he had lost, al­leg­ing the po­lice were re­spon­si­ble for the deaths of his chil­dren. Guardian Me­dia Ltd could not con­firm the iden­ti­ty of Ray­mond Sr’s sec­ond son. How­ev­er, he said he did not con­sid­er Ray­mond Jnr or Ed­wards to be crim­i­nals, claim­ing they were nev­er want­ed by the po­lice.

“They was do­ing they lit­tle weed and what­ev­er and what­ev­er, they nev­er want­ed to say they was want­ed, they was mur­der­ers, to say al­lyuh want them, they nev­er (were on) Be­yond the Tape, al­lyuh come on.”

He said he wants the Gov­ern­ment to look in­to the shoot­ing, as he said his son was awak­ened from sleep by Ed­wards to leave the house.

“My son was sleep­ing, the man that die to­geth­er with him call him so I would like to know who called the man what died, that is all. What I am say­ing is they were as­sas­si­nat­ed by the po­lice,” he re­peat­ed.

He claimed the po­lice of­fi­cers did not act the way they were ‘sup­posed’ to act.

“This thing look­ing like the po­lice get pay off. Long­denville po­lice in too much of rack­et, I say­ing that, al­lyuh do what al­lyuh want af­ter that,” Ray­mond Snr claimed.

Dur­ing his Be­yond the Tape pro­gramme yes­ter­day, In­sp Roger Alexan­der was asked to re­spond to Ray­mond’s Sr’s claims. Alexan­der sent out con­do­lences to the man but had sev­er­al ques­tions of his own.

“You said open­ly your son does a lit­tle bit of weed, et cetera, et cetera, so what is the et cetera, et cetera? Is the et cetera, et cetera pos­ses­sion of firearm, pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion to en­dan­ger life? Is that the et cetera, et cetera we are deal­ing with to­day? Be­cause if it is, some­times par­ents, we need to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our chil­dren’s be­hav­iour,” Alexan­der said.

He said if Ray­mond Sr was aware that he had al­ready lost a son to gun vi­o­lence, he should have con­sid­ered pre­vent­ing his liv­ing son from get­ting in­volved in that type of life.

“Be­cause if you know sir, that you just lost a son some time ago and the oth­er one is head­ing down that same path­way, then what do you think your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is as a par­ent, not to help change the course? Be­cause you are see­ing the same thing about to go down, so you stand up and say your son does a lit­tle weed and et cetera et cetera, you nev­er try to change that path­way? You were com­fort­able?” Alexan­der asked.

Alexan­der said af­ter the of­fi­cers were shot at, they still showed du­ty of care and rushed both men to the near­est health fa­cil­i­ty to try to save their lives.

He said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the shoot­ing will take place and he urged any­one with in­for­ma­tion to come for­ward.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) head David West said they were al­ready mov­ing on the mat­ter.

“Any po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the PCA - the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has al­ready start­ed,” West said.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith de­clined to com­ment on the in­ci­dent, say­ing he would not make state­ments on an ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

But so­cial me­dia users had a mouth­ful to say as the news of the shoot­ing spread yes­ter­day.

Some were on the side of the po­lice, with com­ments like, “You as a fa­ther failed your chil­dren, don’t blame the po­lice for their deaths” and “Some­times par­ents be se­ri­ous con­don­ers of wrong…they al­ways blame so­ci­ety in­stead of recog­nis­ing the faults of their chil­dren.”

Some were more im­pas­sioned, claim­ing Ray­mond Jnr and Ed­wards were ‘killers.’

“Live by the sword and die by it…big drug lords…dis­tress­ing peo­ple and steal­ing cars, it good an yuh like bad­ness,” one user wrote.

Oth­ers, though, ques­tioned the of­fi­cers’ ver­sion of events.

“Nah that is mad­man thing, why these po­lice does tell such not mak­ing sense lies for eh. So the two al­leged just start­ed shoot­ing? Oh plz,” one user wrote.

An­oth­er wrote, “You have to be rell sheep to be­lieve this sto­ry yes cause I cya see how a man go take he new Tus­con to crash in­to a po­lice car to do a shoot­ing, them po­lice had to be mark­ing he to kill he a while so that was the plan…”

There have 21 po­lice-in­volved killings so far for 2021.