Sascha Wil­son

Rel­a­tives of Ica­cos fish­er­man Kern Richards who was shot by the po­lice dur­ing a search at his home want to hear from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Up­set by po­lice claims that he was in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, his for­mer com­mon-law wife Kim­ber­ly Soomai said, “I would re­al­ly like the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to con­tact us…not call us but at least to give us some re­sponse, some­thing.”

She said they got no feed­back from the po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent, but the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty is al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Re­spond­ing to com­ments by Supt Roger Alexan­der on a video of one of the of­fi­cers tak­ing off his mask at the scene on Soomai’s re­quest, she said, “My hon­est re­sponse that I would per­son­al­ly tell Alexan­der if I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to tell him on news is if he comes I’ll ask him to take off his mask and that he works for the coun­try. We are cit­i­zens so we have rights to ask the of­fi­cers to iden­ti­fy them­selves.”

While the po­lice had searched Richards’ home sev­er­al times, she said noth­ing il­le­gal was ever found and he had no crim­i­nal record.

On TV6’s Be­yond the Tape pro­gramme, Alexan­der said the po­lice had in­tel­li­gence that he was in­volved in the nar­cotics and drug trade. How­ev­er, Soomai charged, “If he was so much in­volved why they nev­er put him out­side there like how they use to put Burkie or Chemist or Sand­man or one of them?”

Ac­cord­ing to the Po­lice Ser­vice’s me­dia re­lease, four of­fi­cers from the North­ern Di­vi­sion went to Richards’ home to ex­e­cute a search war­rant for arms and am­mu­ni­tion on Fri­day, but there was a com­mo­tion and Richards was shot mul­ti­ple times.

A gun, ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, was found at his house. How­ev­er, the rel­a­tives claimed that po­lice plant­ed the gun at the scene af­ter he was shot.

Soomai says her 11-year-old son is griev­ing for his fa­ther and would need coun­sel­ing.

“My son is a mess be­cause he was close to his fa­ther. I will fight for my ex-hus­band to get jus­tice. I will make sure we get jus­tice,” she vowed. An au­top­sy on Mon­day re­vealed that 38-year-old Richards suf­fered mul­ti­ple gun­shot in­juries. The fu­ner­al ser­vice will be held on Fri­day at the house of mourn­ing from 1 pm and then to the Fuller­ton Ceme­tery.