Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A To­ba­go fa­ther is ac­cus­ing po­lice of mur­der af­ter his son and an­oth­er male sus­pect were killed in a po­lice shootout at Gold­en Grove Road, Buc­coo, on Thurs­day night.

Buc­coo res­i­dent Ja­mal Clarke, 24, and an­oth­er sus­pect died in an ex­change of gun­fire as they were con­front­ed by po­lice dur­ing a “covert op­er­a­tion” around 7 pm.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, act­ing on in­tel­li­gence, po­lice in­ter­cept­ed a sil­ver Aqua, dri­ven by an uniden­ti­fied sus­pect, with Clarke in the pas­sen­ger seat.

As un­marked po­lice ve­hi­cles closed in, the Aqua tried to es­cape, but was blocked.

An eye­wit­ness ac­count post­ed on­line in a voice note cor­re­spond­ed with the po­lice ver­sion, not­ing of­fi­cers were shot at as they ap­proached the ve­hi­cle.

Po­lice said they re­turned fire, hit­ting both oc­cu­pants. Clarke, who had ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle dur­ing the ex­change, was shot mul­ti­ple times. He died at the scene.

The dri­ver was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal, where he lat­er died. His body is yet to be iden­ti­fied by rel­a­tives. Po­lice re­trieved one gun from the crime scene.

A po­lice of­fi­cer was shot dur­ing the con­fronta­tion, but his in­juries were not life-threat­en­ing. He spent the night at the Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tal and is said to be in sta­ble con­di­tion.

Clarke’s moth­er col­lapsed at the hos­pi­tal on Thurs­day night as con­fir­ma­tion came of her son’s death. Rel­a­tives con­firmed she re­mained hos­pi­talised yes­ter­day as she mourned her son.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side the Scar­bor­ough mor­tu­ary yes­ter­day, Clarke’s fa­ther, Levi Clarke, con­demned the po­lice.

“They mur­der my youth man,” he said, as he vowed to leave every­thing to God.

“God nev­er let me down. Ja­mal, doh wor­ry yuh­self. God is the boss. And when yuh get jus­tice, no­body move. No­body es­cap­ing.”

He claimed po­lice used ex­ces­sive force in the in­ci­dent and should have ar­rest­ed his son in­stead.

“Yuh is no judge and ex­e­cu­tion­er. It have prop­er polic­ing where yuh bring peo­ple be­fore the mag­is­trate court to hear yuh mat­ters.”

Re­call­ing their last mo­ments, he said his son came to their Skeet Trace home around 4.30 pm and played video games with his lit­tle broth­er. He said he washed his son’s clothes and cooked a meal of pelau, be­fore his son told him he was leav­ing to get a hair­cut.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing his son may have been in the wrong com­pa­ny and had his “mis­er­able days”, he in­sist­ed he did not de­serve to be shot dead.

“He had no gun. I want jus­tice. How could a youth man with one lil gun see po­lice with all them big weapon and fire at them? Even self it had a gun, prob­a­bly the next youth man, I don’t know, but my youth man — I sure he had no gun.”

Clarke said he had re­peat­ed­ly warned his son to be care­ful about con­fronta­tions with po­lice.

“Ah does talk to him. Ah does show him that now dif­fer­ent. Yuh liv­ing in a po­lice state right now. Them could do what they want. They eh shoot the man in he foot to say he could keep alive and give him a next chance.”

Clarke said he in­tends to re­port the mat­ter to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA).

Re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tions, Snr Supt Rod­hil Kirk ex­pressed his con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the de­ceased.

Kirk as­sured the po­lice-killings will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by in­de­pen­dent bod­ies. He said once more in­for­ma­tion sur­faces, he will per­son­al­ly in­form the fam­i­lies.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Buc­coo area yes­ter­day, res­i­dents who knew the fam­i­ly said Clarke’s par­ents tried their best with him. How­ev­er, they de­clined to speak about the in­ci­dent, fear­ing po­lice would use the shoot­ing to lock down the area un­der the new Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions law.