Af­ter spend­ing three years on re­mand, a po­lice of­fi­cer, who was charged with mur­der­ing a con­struc­tion work­er while on du­ty in 2016, has walked free.

PC Pe­ter Far­num was freed by Mag­is­trate Joanne Con­nor af­ter she up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion at the end of a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry on Thurs­day. 

How­ev­er, Far­num’s col­league and for­mer co-ac­cused PC Don­ald Snag­gs was not as lucky, as Con­nor ruled that a pri­ma fa­cie case had been made out against him and she com­mit­ted him to stand tri­al. 

The duo, for­mer­ly as­signed to the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force (SDTF), was charged with mur­der­ing Adelle Gilbert on Oc­to­ber 20, 2016. 

Gilbert was near his home at Carl­ton Lane in San Fer­nan­do when he al­leged­ly had an ar­gu­ment with a group of po­lice of­fi­cers. Af­ter a short chase, Gilbert was shot sev­er­al times. 

Dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry be­fore Con­nor, pros­e­cu­tors ten­dered the state­ments of over 50 wit­ness­es, CCTV footage and bal­lis­tic re­ports from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre. 

Af­ter pros­e­cu­tors closed their case, the duo’s lawyers filed sep­a­rate no-case sub­mis­sions on their be­half. 

Far­num’s lawyers, Kei­th and Keon Beck­les, claimed that there was no ev­i­dence their client played a role in Gilbert’s death. 

They al­leged that a bal­lis­tic re­port, which traced a spent shell col­lect­ed on the crime scene to a firearm as­signed to Far­num, could not be linked to him, as it was found some­time af­ter the in­ci­dent and the firearm was al­so as­signed to oth­er of­fi­cers in the unit. 

Con­nor agreed that there was no ev­i­dence that Far­num dis­charged his weapon and ruled that joint en­ter­prise did not arise in the case. She dis­missed Snag­gs’ ap­pli­ca­tion. 

In a press re­lease is­sued on Thurs­day, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) not­ed that it had ini­ti­at­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing re­ports of Gilbert’s shoot­ing and death. The PCA said there was con­tin­u­ous di­a­logue and co-op­er­a­tion with of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) be­fore the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) gave in­struc­tions to charge the duo. 

Snag­gs was rep­re­sent­ed by Stephen Wil­son and Keishel Grant.