An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

As the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the death of prison of­fi­cer Ker­ry Sher­wood at a fir­ing range in Ch­aguara­mas on Fri­day con­tin­ues, one of his col­leagues says he does not be­lieve the of­fi­cer was sui­ci­dal, as was be­ing claimed.

Al­though the death has so far been clas­si­fied as un­nat­ur­al by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Sher­wood’s batch­mate says they are ea­ger­ly await­ing the find­ings, which should in­clude video footage of what had tran­spired at the range.

The 35-year-old fa­ther of one, who lived at Sec­ond Trace, Tu­na­puna, and was at­tached to the Gold­en Grove Prison, Arou­ca, was re­port­ed­ly shot in the right side of his head whilst al­leged­ly prac­tic­ing at MH Tac­ti­cal Train­ing Re­sort, Mt St Cather­ine Road, Ch­aguara­mas.

He was re­port­ed­ly found by a firearms in­struc­tor at 2 pm in Bay 5, which is lo­cat­ed on the west­ern side of the com­pound. He was tak­en to the St James In­fir­mary, where he lat­er died.

The 38-year-old in­struc­tor re­port­ed that whilst prepar­ing to con­duct a class at 1.30 pm, he dis­cov­ered one Glock 17 pis­tol and one mag­a­zine with 15 rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion, which had been placed atop a ta­ble, miss­ing. He re­port­ed­ly alert­ed a col­league and the two be­gan search­ing the com­pound for the miss­ing gun and am­mu­ni­tion.

It was al­leged the men found Sher­wood ly­ing mo­tion­less at Bay 5 bleed­ing from his head. The miss­ing gun, a pair of safe­ty glass­es and earplugs were found be­tween Sher­wood’s legs.

The in­struc­tor re­port­ed­ly cleared the firearm be­fore plac­ing it in a bag, and the two placed Sher­wood in the tray of a pri­vate van, which was used to trans­port him to the hos­pi­tal.

Sher­wood’s black Toy­ota Aqua, which was in the park­ing lot, was lat­er towed to the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion for safe­keep­ing. The gun and am­mu­ni­tion were al­so turned over to the po­lice.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at Sher­wood’s fam­i­ly home in Curepe yes­ter­day, his col­league and friend ap­peared to be in shock still.

Pro­vid­ing moral sup­port to the griev­ing fam­i­ly, the of­fi­cer, who re­quest­ed not to be named, said he had reached out to Sher­wood on Fri­day morn­ing but had not re­ceived a re­sponse to the What­sApp mes­sage.

He said, “I know him to be like any av­er­age man; more or less, he liked to go out and en­joy him­self. Like every­body, he would go through what­ev­er he was go­ing through in his life.”

Say­ing Sher­wood nev­er struck him as be­ing sui­ci­dal or suf­fer­ing from any sort of men­tal anx­i­ety, he said a pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion could be what firearm users some­times re­fer to as a stop­page with the weapon.

“Some­times you could be us­ing a firearm and en­counter a stop­page, which is while you shoot­ing, you squeez­ing the trig­ger but noth­ing com­ing out. A lot of peo­ple, while ad­dress­ing a stop­page, mightn’t do it the cor­rect way, and they could cause a neg­li­gent dis­charge and cause harm to them­selves,” he ex­plained.

He added, “So for MH, from their an­gle, it may look like a sui­cide.”

How­ev­er, he added, “For me, I don’t know him to be sui­ci­dal.”

Ad­mit­ting ac­ci­dents can hap­pen, Sher­wood’s friend said the two had be­come close af­ter train­ing dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic.

He said, “Like every oth­er per­son, he had his unique per­son­al­i­ty, but he was like every­body else.”

He said Sher­wood was not mar­ried.

He dis­missed the sug­ges­tion that Sher­wood could have been the tar­get of any crim­i­nal el­e­ments or the vic­tim of a hit, not­ing the train­ing fa­cil­i­ty was an es­tab­lished or­gan­i­sa­tion with strict pro­to­cols and reg­u­la­tions.

He said, “It is a pro­fes­sion­al place of busi­ness. It have cam­eras go­ing in and cam­eras go­ing out. ... A next thing peo­ple are hint­ing at too is that a big boy could have a neg­li­gent dis­charge and hit him, but for now, I’m tak­ing it as a neg­li­gent dis­charge on his be­half.”

In a re­lease on Fri­day hours af­ter the in­ci­dent, the MH Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Group ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Sher­wood’s fam­i­ly and re­ferred to the in­ci­dent as a sui­cide.