Fran­cis Joseph

Coro­ner Nali­ni Singh yes­ter­day or­dered that two po­lice­men be charged with mur­der.

In an oral judg­ment at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court, Singh found that a case had been made out at the end of an in­quest, for the two po­lice­men to be charged. The po­lice­men were the sub­jects of the in­quest in­to the death of Dami­an An­toine, which oc­curred on Feb­ru­ary 5, 2004, on Morne Co­co Road, Mar­aval. The two po­lice­men were not present in court yes­ter­day when the or­der was made for them to be charged. Singh ad­vised the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the two po­lice­men to en­sure that their clients sur­ren­der so that they could for­mal­ly be charged. The po­lice­men were rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Car­lyle Wal­ters and Michelle King.

Singh said hav­ing heard the oral ev­i­dence in court, and hav­ing read the state­ments sub­mit­ted in the in­quest, she found that a case had been made out in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 28 of the Coro­ner's Act. She said there were two ver­sions of what hap­pened on the night of Feb­ru­ary 5, 2004. She point­ed out that the po­lice con­tend­ed that An­toine was shot in self-de­fence. But the civil­ian wit­ness­es, ac­cord­ing to Singh, said oth­er­wise. They sub­mit­ted that An­toine, 21, was placed on the ground with oth­er peo­ple, and shot sev­er­al times in the leg and chest. An­toine, who lived at Le Plat­te Vil­lage, Mar­aval, died while un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. An­oth­er man who was shot in the same in­ci­dent, sur­vived. At the time of the in­ci­dent, po­lice said, An­toine was walk­ing along Morne Co­co Road, when they called up­on him to stop. They con­tend­ed that An­toine was want­ed for sev­er­al rob­beries. They said that An­toine pulled out a gun and fired at them.

The po­lice said they re­turned fire and An­toine and the oth­er man were shot. But eye­wit­ness­es said An­toine was sit­ting on a wall chat­ting with a friend when they heard sev­er­al gun­shots. Min­utes lat­er, they saw An­toine bleed­ing from gun­shot wounds. One of the po­lice­men who will be charged with mur­der was al­so in­volved in an­oth­er fa­tal shoot­ing two years ear­li­er at West­moor­ings. He was charged with manslaugh­ter at the end of the in­quest presided over by Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc Nicolls. But the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry nev­er got go­ing as he and an­oth­er of­fi­cer were set free on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2004, by Mag­is­trate Lianne Lee Kim af­ter the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions of­fered no ev­i­dence.