Derek Achong

Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, has dis­con­tin­ued the State's case against a 29-year-old man ac­cused of as­sault­ing In­spec­tor Roger Alexan­der al­most 15 years ago. 

Gas­pard filed the no­tice of dis­con­tin­u­ance against Samuel DeLeon just as his case for as­sault­ing Alexan­der by threat­en­ing him with an im­i­ta­tion firearm was set to go on tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain.

Ac­cord­ing to ev­i­dence in the case, the in­ci­dent oc­curred on De­cem­ber 7, 2005, while DeLeon, who was 15-years-old at the time, was walk­ing near to the Aranguez Sa­van­nah. 

Alexan­der, who cur­rent­ly co-hosts the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) pro­gramme Be­yond the Tape on tele­vi­sion sta­tion TV6, was al­leged­ly dri­ving through the area with two col­leagues when they at­tempt­ed to stop DeLeon, who was al­leged­ly be­hav­ing sus­pi­cious­ly.  DeLeon al­leged­ly ran away through the open space and the of­fi­cers chased af­ter him. DeLeon re­port­ed­ly turned around and point­ed an ob­ject re­sem­bling a firearm at them. Alexan­der drew his firearm and fired three shots and DeLeon was hit on his leg.

When he was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal, DeLeon was charged with as­sault­ing Alexan­der and pos­ses­sion of an im­i­ta­tion firearm, which was a bro­ken um­brel­la han­dle. 

Af­ter his first court ap­pear­ance, DeLeon was sent to the St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal for eval­u­a­tion. In his eval­u­a­tion re­port, doc­tors claimed that he was of un­sound mind at the time of the in­ci­dent as he was suf­fer­ing from de­pres­sion and at­ten­tion deficit hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (AD­HD). 

A sec­ond eval­u­a­tion was done in 2017 while DeLeon was wait­ing to go on tri­al. While that re­port said DeLeon was then of sound mind, it al­so stat­ed that the find­ings of the first re­port could not be chal­lenged.

When the case came up for hear­ing be­fore St Clair-Dou­glas on Feb­ru­ary 4, DeLeon's lawyer Chase Pe­gus was asked to iden­ti­fy the de­fences he wished to raise at the tri­al. Af­ter Pe­gus point­ed to the re­ports on DeLeon's san­i­ty and his oth­er de­fence of de­nial, St Clair-Dou­glas grant­ed an ad­journ­ment for Gas­pard to de­cide whether his of­fice would con­tin­ue to pros­e­cute the case. 

When Gas­pard's no­tice of dis­con­tin­u­ance was pre­sent­ed by State pros­e­cu­tor Danielle Thomp­son yes­ter­day, St Clair-Dou­glas im­me­di­ate­ly dis­charged DeLeon.

DeLeon has al­ready sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to file a com­plaint with the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) over Alexan­der's al­leged con­duct in the in­ci­dent.